The east side is the San Jose of the Seattle area. It isn't hip and happening like the city is. Ya, the rent is cheaper (though not much anymore), houses are bigger, it has a very nice clean suburban feel, you don't trip over needles or homeless people, but many young people find the east side to be too boring.
Course, Microsoft has a bunch of buses they use to move engineers from Seattle to Redmond, but like Google does between SF and Mountain View. I guess that could work, but it doesn't really make the traffic better.
