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Boston wages arent competitive enough to make up for the housing costs. You can move to a city with a wider arrange of housing options in areas that are still relatively lively, and your kids can attend the public schools in the city.
In Boston if you want to be somewhere "cool" the schools are shaky at best and the housing is either uber expensive or the quality is lacking relative to what you could get in Seattle Atlanta or Austin.
Many people don't want to work so hard just to get paid 15-20% more in Boston when they can find housing for 1/2 the price in Austin or the Triangle and they can have suburban areas with good schools and good public amenities unlike Boston's sleepier suburbs. When you've got options leaving Boston seems to make sense.
For some Boston is a "starter city" in that you will exhaust your social circle fairly quickly because the city isn't built to be terribly social. And folks start moving and then the schools are unusable after grade 5. And people begin to peel off rapidly after age 33/34 but really beginning in their late 20s...Many leave for NYC because its larger and more exciting or DC because its similar but with larger apartments, more useful and or diverse suburbs. Or Austin and Atlanta due to their lower COL.
Boston has improved since 10+ years ago but still needs to build 150,000 housing units across the metro from 2020-2030 to be a "normal" housing market. And that wont happen.
That's pretty much why I will not be back in Boston. They charge way too much and the rewards aren't there.
Biotech jobs with very similar pay that leave you with more spending money can be found elsewhere.
High violent crime in the city. Two University of Chicago students were recently shot and killed just minding their own business. High property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes do not help either.
I have heard that a lot of the crime is only in a few select areas and the majority of the area is pretty normal. Is this true? Is the reputation of it being a place of high crime driving potential transplants away or are the threats more substantial and actually something that cannot be avoided?
Boston wages arent competitive enough to make up for the housing costs. You can move to a city with a wider arrange of housing options in areas that are still relatively lively, and your kids can attend the public schools in the city.
In Boston if you want to be somewhere "cool" the schools are shaky at best and the housing is either uber expensive or the quality is lacking relative to what you could get in Seattle Atlanta or Austin.
Many people don't want to work so hard just to get paid 15-20% more in Boston when they can find housing for 1/2 the price in Austin or the Triangle and they can have suburban areas with good schools and good public amenities unlike Boston's sleepier suburbs. When you've got options leaving Boston seems to make sense.
For some Boston is a "starter city" in that you will exhaust your social circle fairly quickly because the city isn't built to be terribly social. And folks start moving and then the schools are unusable after grade 5. And people begin to peel off rapidly after age 33/34 but really beginning in their late 20s...Many leave for NYC because its larger and more exciting or DC because its similar but with larger apartments, more useful and or diverse suburbs. Or Austin and Atlanta due to their lower COL.
Boston has improved since 10+ years ago but still needs to build 150,000 housing units across the metro from 2020-2030 to be a "normal" housing market. And that wont happen.
It’s true. I make almost twice as much in Seattle as Boston. Seattle housing is slightly more expensive than Boston, but newer stock and more sqft. There’s no state income tax in WA, which more than offsets the slightly higher housing costs. Property taxes are low in WA too. Public schools are decent in Seattle proper (no busing) and the Eastside suburban schools are comparable to MetroWest. And there’s no snow to shovel. I can drive to fresh pow in under an hour.
My theory is that the high numbers of trainees and students in Boston create a terrible labor market for skilled professionals. Employers are conditioned to exploiting that labor for all they can.
For some Boston is a "starter city" in that you will exhaust your social circle fairly quickly because the city isn't built to be terribly social. And folks start moving and then the schools are unusable after grade 5. And people begin to peel off rapidly after age 33/34 but really beginning in their late 20s...Many leave for NYC because its larger and more exciting or DC because its similar but with larger apartments, more useful and or diverse suburbs. .
I'd bet there's a "if I'm gonna spend this much I may as well live in NYC" attitude
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guineas
My theory is that the high numbers of trainees and students in Boston create a terrible labor market for skilled professionals. Employers are conditioned to exploiting that labor for all they can.
Which also explains why I see sales jobs paying 40k in southern California. Some people are willing to work cheap just to put something on their resume and/or live in soCal.
Seattle has the same dynamic of young grads moving in then leaving when they hit 30. The population of 20-somethings is huge, though that's only within city limits and the rest of the metro isn't far off the national average.
Another year, another very detailed report from CBRE on tech talent in North American cities.
Some interesting takeaways from the report
Top 3 fastest growing (brain gain)
1. Toronto (+54,862)
2. Seattle (+29,336)
3. Montreal (+15,772)
Most brain drain (bottom 3)
1. Chicago (-32,407)
2. Boston (-37,376)
3. NYC (65,478)
Top 10 markets
Not living up to social media hype
South Florida: 66.9K tech jobs in 2019, 67.5K in 2020.
have at it people, definitely would love to hear peoples thoughts on this particular ranking, how cities stack up and things they have missed out as well.
link to report: https://www.cbre.us/research-and-reports/Scoring-Tech-Talent-in-North-America-2021?article={D3EA4CC8-B064-4CEB-A696-26B6B84F9BF6}
I read this report. Very interesting about Atlanta in that its produces more tech grads than its local market can absorb, thus, helping other southeast markets Second, when you look at that top 10, considering Austin's size, its tech sector is more concentrated than any others because its MSA is smaller than all others.
This analysis is based on federal job classifications in the US, and presumably something roughly parallel in Canada. It's not fully nuanced but not a bad way to do it.
Houston has a huge amount of engineering talent in the Oil and Gas industry, but the mindset of the companies there is so, so, different from Silicon Valley. I don't see internet tech picking up there much personally.
Atlanta and also DFW have a lot of corporate tech. Basically very large non-tech corporations who nonetheless employ a lot of tech workers. Think of your Home Depot, Capital One, etc. They have a nice foundation of tech workers in raw numbers, but similar issues with the culture that will need to be overcome. But overall I'm more bullish on them becoming tech hubs than Houston. The premium talent in the US is concentrated on the West Coast along Boston, NYC, and Austin. (Also Chicago to some extent, particularly in finance). I could see South Florida being a big spot for remote workers but it will take them a while to have a healthy local scene.
One advantage Canada has is much laxer immigration laws. That allows them to tap into India to a much greater extent than cities in the US can.
DFW is maybe the best example of ranking high in Tech talent but not being a Tech HQ. DFW is like second or third in H1 B visas employees in the U.S. Its a big financial services hub, maybe largest in the sunbelt due to both private companies and being a Banking Regulatory hub and they use a lot of Tech.
I think Florida is never going to be what those there hope.
Interesting that some metros make both reports top 10 like Raleigh, Chicago and NYC but others don't like Atlanta, DFW and Austin. This makes me wonder if the 2021 Scoring Tech Talent Report includes Bio-Tech numbers? Would some cities overall rankings drop if bio-tech jobs are excluded?
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