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Let me define what I mean by unsettled. For starters, it takes time to develop a career path. If one has a family business, or works for a locally-based business, and has much time invested in the same, it is not only unlikely, but virtually impossible to leave the same without losing all the contacts, seniority, and such that has been created in a specific locale. In short, one would be starting over again. A small business owner, dentist, real estate agent, etc., would have to start completely anew developing a new clientele, which could take years, with no guarantee of success. Leaving a locally based company with no extensions in Austin would mean building up a new climb to seniority as well. My point is, most people will not leave a situation that is prosperous, locally based, and close the door forever, just to take a chance that they can do the same in a completely new environment. This leads to the conclusion that people who relocate to a place like Austin are far more likely to be beginning careers, changing careers, or in a situation where they've never established a sold career path in the first place. Is a place like Austin worthy of jettisoning years of contacts and seniority to take a chance on reestablishing the same, with no guarantees? Has anyone here actually left a city where one has had a thriving locally based business, or given up an established path in a business, to take a shot at re-building the same in Austin?
My take is that Austin gives people who are shut out of other job markets and real estate markets a chance to establish themselves. I would be curious to know
how many new Austin residents came to the city without a job waiting for them, and who came here with a job waiting for them. My hunch is that a large majority are in the latter, and came, some with viable skills, some without, hoping to find something they could fit into, with a nest egg that would tide them over until they did. Again, Austin seems to be one of those places that encourages that mentality, re all the posts that say they are moving to Austin, some sight
unseen, hoping they find work when they get there. Las Vegas is the only other city that comes to mind that seems to attract the "I'll just move there and find
something eventually" mentality. This is what I mean by the unsettled, transient nature of cities like Austin. I think that it is also part of the American mindset,
in that there will always be a group of people looking to escape from what they perceive as lack of opportunities and a thriving environment in their home city,
that flock to growing cities, of which there is always a handful that fit the bill at any one time. Phoenix and a few Florida cities fit that bill as well. What usually
happens is that people bring their problems along with them, and proceed to remake the place in the image from the place whence they came, per traffic, crime,
and all the various other things they fled from. Las Vegas became essentially Los Angeles East in thsi remaking effect, along with Phoenix. Can Austin be headed towards that same path, if it is simply attracting the unsettled masses, who create the same problems in their wake? Or is Austin a special, singular case unrelated to the other cities I've mentioned? If not, what makes it so special that it won't succumb to the same?
Last edited by scongress1234; 05-16-2008 at 07:21 AM..
I don't know that that has to do with Austin, in particular. I'd say that your theory might be correct for a lot of people moving to any new location.
However, the out of staters that I deal with moving to Austin are a mix, but many of them tend to be successful people who either have a career that allows them to live wherever they wish, mixing preferred lifestyle with financial success, or they are expanding their business to this area without closing it down in the previous location, because they see a market here for their services. Others have been transferred here by their employer who either already has a location here or is opening up one. (You don't hear about that as much on the news as you do about the layoffs.)
So, anecdotally, my experience as a real estate agent doesn't bear out your theory that the people who are moving to Austin are primarily unsettled people who "are beginning careers, changing careers, or in a situation where they've never established
a sold career path in the first place."
Hmmmm...I see your argument, but I'm not sure how reality-based it is. I have a feeling there are several people on this forum that can attest to a different situation.
As for us - we moved here 2 years ago when we were both 32. I worked for 8 years at the same high school prior to resigning and moving here (without a job). Since I've been here, I've had the opportunity to work at UT, attend full time graduate school, and am now "re-entering" the workforce in secondary education. So...I'm ending up back where I started, however with the benefit of 2 years of pursuing alternative paths (that I NEVER would have had the opportunity to, financially, in Rhode Island). Yes, I gave up tenure, seniority, and several thousands dollars worth of salary - but it was worth it to me.
My husband is in the private business sector, and he took a much bigger risk than I did. He took a 20k paycut and loss of title (basically a big step backwards) to move to a new company here...but they also never had "his" position before at this company, and brought him on as sort of an experiment. Within 6 months, he was given a 20k promotion and a higher title than the one he had in Rhode Island - so the same salary (but in a much smaller market/lower cost of living) but big notch in his belt for his resume.
We also have 3 young children, btw, so it's not like we were just capriciously going wherever the wind blew us without responsibilities. It was a big risk and people thought we were crazy - but it was the best decision (next to having our kids) that we ever made as a couple.
Interesting anecdotes! What I can cull is that it indeed is a chance, with no guarantees. I think it depends on the nature of the career path as well. Teaching and nursing are relatively transferrable skills, which explains the large number of posters on here that are looking for the same. Some tech areas would include the same, though you get into the seniority cunundrum, unless you have the nest egg and ability to start your own business, and the time and money to develop a clientele. Most careers in which a large amount of time and money, not to mention contacts, have been invested, are not as readily carried over into a completely new area, and involve a large element of risk. At the same time, there will always be people who are willing to take that chance, who are simply tired of their home cities and life, and willing to shuck it for that quite American chance to make a fresh start. Austin probably atrracts a combination of the same, with the commonality that all are taking a chance, but feel that life is too short not to take it.
Another related question....What are all the newcomers looking for? Obviously something that they didn't have in their home cities, whether lack of opportunity, boredom with a humdrum life, the desire to get away from stifling family problems, or maybe just the chance to redefine themselves. I'm trying to get at the point that there IS an unsettled nature of relocatees to Austin, even if its just the feeling that their lives are incomplete, and they need a new environment to redefine and grow themselves and their careers.
So, what are you who are looking to move to Austin looking for? Are those things I mentioned indeed what you are looking for that you can't get in your home cities? Do you really feel that you will become a more complete or happier person in Austin? What bums you out about your home city that makes you willing to start anew in a different place, of which you might be very unfamiliar with, other than what you read about on the web? And. for those who HAVE moved to Austin, how much better have your lives become? Has it really given you that chance to remake yourself, and do you feel a changed and better person for it? Per Maslov's Self-Actualization curve, do you feel you are living on a much higher plane than you were before? Or are you possibly struggling with the same
problems you had in the place you moved away from?
I think the world is much smaller, in one sense, than you appear to think it is, scongress1234. These days, lots of people (even people in tiny towns) have contacts all over the country, if not all over the world. Courtesy of forums like this, of the internet in general, we get to "know" people before we ever meet them and can make contacts in our chosen field before we ever move, and learn more about the community we're considering than the local chamber of commerce is likely to tell us. That impacts the "fear factor" and "unknown factor" of moving dramatically, I've observed.
I think the world is much smaller, in one sense, than you appear to think it is, scongress1234. These days, lots of people (even people in tiny towns) have contacts all over the country, if not all over the world. Courtesy of forums like this, of the internet in general, we get to "know" people before we ever meet them and can make contacts in our chosen field before we ever move, and learn more about the community we're considering than the local chamber of commerce is likely to tell us. That impacts the "fear factor" and "unknown factor" of moving dramatically, I've observed.
On the other hand, we lack real-life contacts and the social skills that go with the same now far more than previously. I don't think the internet will ever be a substitute for face-to-face contact. On the same train of thought, we seem to trust people we've never seen, ironically, on the web, far more than people we meet in real life. The reality is that people are relying on strangers to essentially confirm decisions that they should be making themselves.
I have an interesting "thought experiment". Pretend that its 1985, and that there is no web. Now, then, how would you make a decision to move to a city like Austin? Would you, even? Cities were growing long before the web. Have we relied on the web far more than necessary, almost to the point where we can't confirm a major decision without consulting it? Is it the new imprimature of consultation, the "They" of old, in that "they said this and that"? Do people have essentially a blind trust in the web and the information it purveys that they don't have in the real life they live in? Do they trust strangers and blips more than personal contacts they have or have not made? Where would Austin relocation be without the web, and City-Data,
Texas Horse Lady?
I did. Actually, I decided to move to Austin in 1968, with no internet. Now, then, I was, indeed, unsettled, but so was just about everyone. And there were people moving to Austin even then. And in the 1980's, when the internet was just barely more than a gleam in someone's eye. However, when I moved here, I knew people who had come here for school, I knew people who were in school here, I knew people who knew professors here - we just did the same thing we do on the internet via phone and actual letters and such. A bit more slowly, true, but you'd be amazed.
In 1970, I got a room in a house that was posted on the board at the Student Union. Two months later, one of the roommates moved out and we posted the availability and got a new roommate that none of us had ever met before. A couple of months after that, new roommate and I got to talking about what brought us to Austin and it turned out that the same couple that each of us knew casually had been a large factor in each of us deciding to move to Austin because of the reports they gave of it. I met them in Dallas. She met them in Boston. This happened often enough over the years that when the internet came along it was to me, and I think this is how it should be regarded, as just a new tool in what's been going on as long as there've been people.
As for the folks on the internet being strangers just because we meet them there, that's not been my experience. I've had the glad opportunity to get to meet more than a few people that were originally my Invisible Friends in person and they were no more different from the way they appeared online than anyone would be that you take time to get to know - more like I expected than not, in other words. For the past 8 years I've been a volunteer editor (MagMom, dispensing virtual milk and cookies or margaritas as the situation requires) for an equine publication that goes out nationwide, along with more or less 20 other volunteers, all of whom met online, maybe 5 of whom have ever actually met in the flesh. Yet we manage to conceive of and create and publish something that is in hard copy for as long as we have, spread out from one coast to the other and across the ocean. That's pretty real life to me, don't know about you.
And this isn't an unusual story. The internet is nothing more than a tool for people to do what they've always done, more efficiently.
I did. Actually, I decided to move to Austin in 1968, with no internet. Now, then, I was, indeed, unsettled, but so was just about everyone. And there were people moving to Austin even then. And in the 1980's, when the internet was just barely more than a gleam in someone's eye. However, when I moved here, I knew people who had come here for school, I knew people who were in school here, I knew people who knew professors here - we just did the same thing we do on the internet via phone and actual letters and such. A bit more slowly, true, but you'd be amazed.
In 1970, I got a room in a house that was posted on the board at the Student Union. Two months later, one of the roommates moved out and we posted the availability and got a new roommate that none of us had ever met before. A couple of months after that, new roommate and I got to talking about what brought us to Austin and it turned out that the same couple that each of us knew casually had been a large factor in each of us deciding to move to Austin because of the reports they gave of it. I met them in Dallas. She met them in Boston. This happened often enough over the years that when the internet came along it was to me, and I think this is how it should be regarded, as just a new tool in what's been going on as long as there've been people.
As for the folks on the internet being strangers just because we meet them there, that's not been my experience. I've had the glad opportunity to get to meet more than a few people that were originally my Invisible Friends in person and they were no more different from the way they appeared online than anyone would be that you take time to get to know - more like I expected than not, in other words. For the past 8 years I've been a volunteer editor (MagMom, dispensing virtual milk and cookies or margaritas as the situation requires) for an equine publication that goes out nationwide, along with more or less 20 other volunteers, all of whom met online, maybe 5 of whom have ever actually met in the flesh. Yet we manage to conceive of and create and publish something that is in hard copy for as long as we have, spread out from one coast to the other and across the ocean. That's pretty real life to me, don't know about you.
And this isn't an unusual story. The internet is nothing more than a tool for people to do what they've always done, more efficiently.
I don't disagree. The net is an amazing info resource. I just wonder how much it has displaced real life skills, in that people spend so much time on it, and many seem to prefer it to real life contacts. And, on the contrary, people are more often than not different from what they appear in one's minds eye,
from just reading the posts. People are complex, and there is infinitely more going on than what they choose to disclose or create per virtual identities.
Not to even mention the criminal or nefarious intent of many who pose on the net as helpful, in the worst of circumstances. As you say, it is a facilitator at best, a starting point, for deeper, real relationships. I strongly feel that many of us have lost social skills, and many young people confuse the net for real life encounters, per the girl who hung herself per the my space thing. It is a great starting point, but lacking when people use it as their main social outlet.
My wife and I are very recent transplants. We came down here from Kansas city were we had lived for about a year and a half and it just wasn't a fit for us. Before that we had lived between Phoenix, San Diego, and LA.
So far Austin seems like a good fit for us. I am very big into nightlife, shows, clubs, music. It may sound kinda funny but I really LOVE the way the downtown looks. It has kinda an artsy feel to it. But in a clean way. The far opposite of Phoenix, Dusty and dull.
We are used to the heat in the summers having lived in Phoenix so it really wont be an issue for us, and found that we just aren't snow people living up in Kansas.
We are going to be starting a family soon, and Austin seems to have alot of what we want. For us we would like to raise our kids in a lovely suburb community with nice schools, But still have a quick drive into downtown for shows and fun.
We aren't overtly concerned people, and that might be what hurts us down here. I have met plenty of people with expectations of who I should be. I mean that in the sense of, how I should look, How much I do or Don't care about global warming, What job I should have, Do I or Don't I go to church, Which part of town I have to live in to be "enlightened" hahahaha. All sorts of stuff like that. Truly that stuff is everywhere not just Austin.
Other then that,,,We think we made a great choice by coming here. Love the people, Love the city, Love the weather (though I would like more storms like the other night)Love scenery, Love house prices.
Happy to be here.
Chris2000
My husband & I live about an hour north of LA (about 45 miles north). We moved here about 4 years ago from LA (and I moved to LA from Boston 4 years before that to get away from the cold. He moved from Chicago for the same reason). I'm in a band. I'm into seeing other bands, independent films (and other movies, of course), experimental art, eating at fun places, hanging out in bars with friends, etc...
There isn't much to do where I am now. I'm not really into the beach lifestyle (like most of the people who live here) and never made friends here. I've become more and more of a hermit over the years even though I love going out. All of my friends are in Boston or LA, and I find myself doing the awful 1+ hour drive to LA more and more often. I pretty much hate it here, but I don't want to move back to LA (too phony) or Boston (too cold) either. I'm hoping Austin will be the place for me. Warm, fun, liberal, interesting things to do, music, etc...
As for a job, I run an internet-based small business and also do freelance web design. Both of these things can be done anywhere, so I don't need a job waiting for me to move.
I hope that answers some of your questions.
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And there were people moving to Austin even then. And in the 1980's, when the internet was just barely more than a gleam in someone's eye. However, when I moved here, I knew people who had come here for school, I knew people who were in school here, I knew people who knew professors here - we just did the same thing we do on the internet via phone and actual letters and such. A bit more slowly, true, but you'd be amazed. 
