The other places you mention are little college towns without any industry, could be appropriate for people in their early 20s who have their own job to bring. Spokane and Pullman are really cheap, but they're in the middle of nowhere. Reno is probably the best of the bunch, it's nice and has more of an economy, plus it's a relatively short drive back to civilization and San Francisco.
Some parts of Phoenix are really nice, as is Tucson, affordable, great weather, etc but the always-in-your-face abrasive politics of AZ can be off putting.
It's a bit further out, but I think the South will be major growth areas for tech. Highly affordable, friendly people, good weather for most of the year, great cities and culture, etc.
Compared to what? San Francisco?
Max temps for the 10 day forecast: 102, 100, 101, 103, 103, 98 (cool!), 101, 105, 107, 109 (!!!).
You better like being indoors all the time.
I agree that we have wacky politicians, but so does California! Our mayor Greg Stanton is pretty cool. He wants to encourage more investment in high tech industry.
We also have great hiking, some of the best sunsets to be had, low cost of living.
Way better climate, IMO, than west of the Cascades.
WSU is an intellectual asset, a major campus, but it is located a 90-minute freeway drive away in the smaller town of Pullman, which don't get much respect but isn't so bad either.
Edit: Under the heading of intellectual asset, I completely forgot Gonzaga U, which puts some brain-power right in Spokane.
Sincerely Yours, Idaho
How do you plan on wooing applicants that may fall victim to racial profiling because they are within 100 miles of the border, or that might end up in one of Sheriff Joe's tent camps just due to being accused of something (or looking at one of his deputies the wrong way).
Do you not think that this limits your talent pool because many people of different ethnicities might not want to take the risk of relocating to such a hostile environment for them?
And to focus on something that will affect everyone, not partisan fears, in Phoenix mere mortals can actually afford to buy a home.
Also, being wrongly convicted of a crime doesn't "affect everyone" but I would argue that doesn't mean we should ignore it.
--Towns aside from phoenix
We lived in Mountain View in 2013 when I consulted at Google, and I admit that was fun living there for a while, but life is very good in inexpensive low population areas. BTW, the mountains in Central Arizona are significantly cooler than Phoenix and we get a little snow in the winter which is fun.
My wife and I are both post-graduate STEM evacuees from the BA (Mt. View, 2nd and Townsend in SF, Santa Clara). We miss a lot about the BA, but as mentioned in the article, once you have a kid, two 1 hr commutes, possibly in opposite directions, are a non-starter. The thing we miss most about the BA are the people associated things because... the retrograde politics and essentially fascist outlook of the politically powerful has become suffocating. It is quite common to be in a restaurant and have some ragged beat down old white fellow packing a large gun. I have a youngish couple who walk an infant in a stroller by my house in the evening and the otherwise normal looking man-boy carries a giant pistol. I had words with the typical sort in Trader Joes because he felt he needed to pack a gun while shopping for groceries. Prescott has essentially no crime, nor much in the way of minorities, for that matter. It's not about safety.
This never happened 10 years ago, and earlier. Something happened around 2008, and things have been going downhill ever since.
- Climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagstaff,_Arizona#Climate
- Visual glance at vegetation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Flagstaf...
Further south, Prescott, at 5400 feet:
- Climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott,_Arizona#Climate
- Visual glance at vegetation: http://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-downtown-prescot...
versus, Phoenix, at 1100 feet
- Climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona#Climate
- Visual glance at vegetation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/PhoenixD... (notice that the trees are all planted, as there are none on the mountains, and absent from less-prosperous residential areas)
As Andrew Ross writes, Phoenix is one of the least sustainable cities in the world (1).
Flowing from its corrupt politics and supply-side economics, I suspect AZ will go the same way (for some of the same reasons) as Sam Browback's Kansas / Bobby Jindal's Louisiana with huge structural revenue deficits.
(1) https://www.amazon.com/Bird-Fire-Lessons-Worlds-Sustainable/...
Phoenix has poor connectivity to just about everywhere else, is on a detour (I-10) from the straight-line Tucson to San Diego road (I-8) and is skipped by Union Pacific's main railroad line between Yuma and El Paso. It's bypassed completely by I-40, the successor to the famous Route 66 as the road from the midwest to the California coast, and by BNSF's southern transcon that follows that route closely. The road linking it with its nearest big neighbor, Las Vegas, despite recently having been expanded to a divided highway, is still vastly short of an interstate [2]. To get towards Flagstaff or Prescott (or towards Vegas) you have to climb out of the Gila basin.
And yet, despite these odds and the oppressive summer heat, the desert floor is covered in Phoenix' rectangular sprawl for nearly 50 consecutive miles. More so than perhaps any other large city, it creates it own demand just by the virtue of existing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...
And it's mostly flat land that's easy to build on and farm.
That geography made it valuable to the Hohokam people, and I've heard that their irrigation systems supported the largest population in the Southwest by 1300. [1]
It was a good place to build a city, until it outgrew its water supply.
Cutting edge/super cheap hacker space incubator wet/dry labs- http://www.ceigateway.com, http://www.seedspot.com, http://www.cohoots.com
Great coffee/art/music/community- http://www.luxcoffee.com, http://www.artlinkphoenix.com, http://www.rooseveltrow.org, http://www.valleybarphx.com, http://www.crescentphx.com
Gorgeous, walk-able, affordable historic districts- http://www.willohistoricdistrict.com, http://www.windsorsquarephoenix.com, http://www.rooseveltneighborhood.org
July and August are the only months with truly hot weather, but San Francisco is a 90 minute flight away, and its a quick weekend trip to San Diego and LA, and a day trip to Flagstaff where its 30 degrees cooler. June and September bring cooler pleasant mornings and evenings, you are generally in your office midday anyway. October until May is truly gorgeous, the best weather in the country.
Central Phoenix is one of the most liberal, inclusive, and open minded places in the country. Many from Phoenix are from someplace else originally so there is less of a nepotistic, "who you know" culture here than the Coasts. People here are extremely independent and very friendly.
Comparing urban Central Phoenix, where most startups are located, to to other towns an hour or more away in more suburban/rural areas is similar to comparing Palo Alto to a small agricultural town outside Silicon Valley. Its apples and oranges.
I think Walmart would disagree with you on both.
"This year, the company opened a downtown Phoenix office with sales and customer service jobs. “San Francisco is a terrible place for entry-level people,” Mr. Coburn said, because the infrastructure and housing are “failing.”"
"But as the latest exodus gathers steam, these outlying cities hope some of the higher-paying engineering jobs will start moving as well.
“We don’t want to be San Francisco’s back office — we need more creators here,”"
This pretty much summarizes the article. Phoenix isn't yet seeing a mass influx of developer jobs, but it's hoping that because some companies already have offices there for other positions, they'll be able to lure some high-end talent as well.
[1] https://m.tuftandneedle.com/if-you-re-building-a-startup-you...
What I see on the ground here is that people from all economic backgrounds can afford to work, live, and have a family. What I see up there is a set of NIMBY policies that restrict prosperity to the 1%.
PHX adopts policies welcoming middle-skill, middle-income people and families; fauxgressives in SF Bay give them the middle finger.
