Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We are considering to move to RTP area from San Jose, CA. Both me and my wife are from India. We have lived in silicon valley for past decade.
We have two reasons to move -
1. Cost of living - affording a home without mountain of debt
2. Better work culture (that's our hope)
We both like silicon valley a lot and we had great times here. It is a great place in terms of weather, accessibility to beautiful places, and job opportunities.
The things we don't like are,
1. Very high home prices or crazy commute (around 1 hour each way)
2. Work culture with little or no respect for personal time. Evening time, weekend time and vacation time - nothing is sacred. Frequent project deadlines around december end.
We like suburban lifestyle. We like to go out to eat on weekends. Once in a month we like to visit some nice downtown.
I want advice on,
1. What areas in RTP should we consider?
2. I am in high tech - hardware (Silicon). How big is this community over there? I feel there is enough SW but I am nor sure about HW.
3. How bad are the summers and how long is the bad part? (given where I grew up, I should not sound this scared )
There is a large high-tech community in the Triangle area, with RTP being the epicenter of that community. There are a lot of high-tech jobs in area. I'm in software so I don't feel qualified to comment on the difference between hardware vs. software.
I don't know about the work culture in Silicon Valley. But where I work at least, you should expect to work a reasonable amount of overtime. I currently have a deadline and am working evenings and weekends. Others in my company don't need to do so, though. I can't compare to Silicon Valley since I've never worked there.
For housing, the entire Triangle area will likely work. North Raleigh, South Durham, Morrisville, and Cary will be the closest to RTP, with different portions being closer or further away depending on where you are employed in RTP. Any should easily provide commute times less than 30 minutes in the heart of rush hour. For comparison, my commute from North Raleigh to my job in RTP is less than 20 minutes (17, give or take 3 minutes for hitting traffic lights poorly). Which is the best fit depends on what you are looking for in a home and how much your are willing to spend.
I currently live in truckee, ca and moving for same reasons.y cousin lives in apex and we thinking there. I am originally from new Jersey and although west coast is soooo much better the east coast isn't so bad. Good luck
2. Work culture with little or no respect for personal time. Evening time, weekend time and vacation time - nothing is sacred. Frequent project deadlines around december end.
I've worked for a lot of companies and this varies far more from company to company (even those sharing an office building) than from state to state. There are a lot of companies around here as well that will work you to death if you let them.
1) RTP isn't so large that what area you're in will matter. There's plenty of affordable housing within easy commute of RTP.
2) I have the same impression you do. Lots of SW not as much HW as Boston or Silicon Valley. That's just an impression though as I'm in SW as well.
3) Having spent a decade in Florida I found last summer here to be cool and dry. People who moved here from New England tell me it was actually hot and humid. ;-)
There is a sizeable Indian population here especially in Morrisville which is closest to RTP. Your commute wont be as bad as in Bay Area.
Housing is much cheaper and you have lot of choices.
It is a definitely a much slower lifestyle than Bay Area.
You did not mention whether you are trying to relocate with your company or looking for a job here. This area has more Software jobs and not much Hardware. Infact, most of the Engineering grads from local univs move to Silicon Valley sooner or later for better opportunities.
Austin Texas might be another area to consider for HW jobs.
Good luck !
My husband and I just moved back to NC from San Jose in November. We'd both lived here before. I'm from NC originally and he's from Mumbai.
My husband was pretty frustrated with the work culture in his CA position. I don't know that he works much less than he did in CA now that we're back, but he feels like his current company is more respectful of his time. He still works some weekends and spends time on work when he gets home. (He does go in a little later, though.) But folks here seem to ask if he needs to work overtime, and they have good reasons when they ask. That wasn't always the case before. That may just be a difference between his old team and current team or his old company and current company, though. I sense that the work culture is for the most part better from talking to other friends in tech jobs.
There are plenty of great restaurants here. Some of them have gotten national recognition. There aren't as many restaurants to choose from as there are in the Bay Area, but you can find most of the types of foods here that you can find there if you're willing to drive between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. There aren't as many Asian restaurants here as in San Jose, but if you have a craving for Thai, Vietnamese, etc., there are still some options.
I miss having a city like SF so close by, but the great thing about NC is that you can easily get to all of the major cities on the East Coast if you want a weekend excursion. DC's a 4.5 hour drive. You can drive to NY in around 7 hours or take a short flight. Downtown Raleigh is getting better every day and may fit your need for a monthly downtown trip. It's as good as any downtown in the South Bay in my opinion, but it's nowhere near SF.
The summer's sometimes hotter than SJ's daytime temps, and it's always more humid. Not sure where you're from in India, but it's still much more pleasant here even on the hottest day than it is in Mumbai in November. The great thing about the heat and humidity is that you can actually swim at the beach here. The beaches in CA are beautiful, no doubt, but the beaches here blow them away because they're so much more usable.
I wouldn't come here without a job, of course. And the job may dictate where you live. Most of the tech companies are in the RTP area, although Qualcomm is in Brier Creek (which is still pretty close to RTP) and Red Hat is moving to downtown Raleigh. There's not a huge difference in prices, though, from town to town or street to street like in Silicon Valley, because the school districts are for the most part county-wide. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are a little more expensive, but it's nowhere near the premium you'd pay in Cupertino or Palo Alto. That's probably because the other area schools are pretty solid and you don't have the wide variation in quality you see in Silicon Valley schools. (There is some uncertainty currently in Wake County that you can read about on this forum. But overall the difference between a top school in Wake and the other Wake alternatives is not the same as the difference between Silicon Valley districts. Most Wake schools are pretty even in quality.)
Hope this helps!
Last edited by irby; 04-19-2012 at 10:48 AM..
Reason: Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools not county wide
I worked at Research Triangle Institute in the 1980s, and would suggest you look at their Advanced Technology division (might at least be a good place to make contacts):
There are three major universities in the Research Triangle: Duke (Durham), UNC (Chapel Hill), NC State (Raleigh). When I lived there, the hardware/circuit guys were mostly at NC State so you might look for contacts there, too. There was a lot of VHSIC research being done in the Triangle in those days.
I didn't find the summers in North Carolina particularly oppressive, and enjoyed being able to eat lunch at the picnic tables outside work into November.
There's a significant Indian population in this area, due to RTP and also NC State University. As mentioned, Morrisville has a sizeable community as does Cary. I bet if you googled "Indian community" + Morrisville or Cary, or RTP, you'd find resources and probably even a discussion list.
I would have to say the opposite on this one. I am from San Diego, where there is Much more public access to beaches there than on the NC coast.
I'm not referring to public access when I say they're more usable, although I do think there's tons of public access to beaches in NC - Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke, etc., have miles of uninterrupted shoreline. And it's never been hard for me to take a day trip to Wrightsville and get on the beach. There's public parking and there are public access points. What I really mean is that the beaches here are warm. San Diego is at least eight hours from Silicon Valley, where the OP lives, and the beaches there aren't even particularly warm when compared to beaches here in the summer. The beaches close to San Jose are incredibly cold. There's not much to do there as a result. Santa Cruz is the warmest but it's still too cold to swim.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
) 
