Making Seattle my home

http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-seattle-my-home.html

by jseliger • 15 years ago

47 51 15 years ago

matt-welsh.blogspot.com

mobileman• 15 years ago

We should hang out

ryanmolden• 15 years ago

For all new to or planning on coming to Seattle there is a Hacker News meetup that recent started (http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/2752013...), I haven't been as I live up north and driving into Seattle is something I try to do as little as possible for my own sanity. There is also a local startup group (Seattle Tech Startups: http://seattletechstartups.com/doku.php) who have occasional talks at the UW campus as well as a fairly active social calendar (http://www.seattletechcalendar.com/). Then of course there is the UW which has public lectures, Bill Gates is giving a talk next week I believe (just saw an e-mail invite for it today, but alas I am gone on vacation next week).

sukuriant2• 15 years ago

I do wish there were more Hacker News meetups on Eastside, though ... getting over to Seattle is a bit of a drive, and compared to Bellevue and Redmond, hellish traffic and roads.

zacharycohn2• 15 years ago

Yep! I run the events, and I was looking for a good place to plug them on this thread... :) They're wildly successful (120 RSVPs in ~24 hours for this latest event...), and there's free beer and free pizza.

I'll be posting it to HN early next week, but if you RSVP now you'll have a much better chance (I'm capping it at 200 RSVPs).

laluser3• 15 years ago

I am also moving to Seattle in a few months after I finish school. Having spent my summer there, I can't say I have any complaints, winters however, are a different story I hear. Coming from the Midwest though, I think I would prefer the rain over 3 months of harsh winters.

On a side note, I am curious in finding out why do so many high-achieving computer science folks in academia make the jump to work at Google? It takes a lot of effort to reach the point where some of these people are at, so there must be great incentives to make that move. What are those?

wuster• 15 years ago

IMO, as ex-Googler, academic minded engineers will find more "kindred spirits" at a company like Google than most others.

ycalumn5• 15 years ago

That's how they payed you at a discount; you believe that.

caryme• 15 years ago

I'm moving from the midwest to Seattle soon after graduating too! I'll be moving out in late August to work at Microsoft after I graduate from Northwestern University this spring. I agree about the weather - mild/gray/rainy may be an improvement over wintery death.

laluser3• 15 years ago

Neat! I am at Chicago and will be at Amazon come February (hopefully further than that so I can do some travelling). Seattle is a pretty large tech hub and am excited to dive into some of the startup communities out there. I am guessing you interned at MSFT?

bgramer• 15 years ago

I moved to Seattle from Chicago to work at Amazon. When people ask me how I put up with the rain in Seattle, I just reply back "how do you put up with the snow?"

Seattle has a great diverse ecosystem for outdoors enthusiasts - drive for an hour or so, and you can go skiing, hiking, swimming, camping and more.

Seattle has a great craft beer culture as well. Some of my favorite bars are: Brouwers, Uber, Naked City, Beveridge Place Pub and Collins Pub.

If you want authentic mexican, check out Oaxaca in Ballard. As for taco truck food, check out El Camion in the parking lot of Home Depot on 135th and I-99 Aurora as well as Taqueria Tequila on 85th.

For Chicago style stuffed pizza, check out Delfino's in University Village and stay far away from Kylie's in Fremont (ugh)...for normal pizza, try Serious Pie, Flying Squirrel and Via Tribunali.

For breakfast, try Beth's Cafe and CJ's (my favorite eggs benedict)

For italian, try Cafe Lago. Great pasta.

For sandwiches - my 2 favorite places are Salumi's where you should try the Mole & Mozz. Salumi's is a few blocks away from where the Seahawks play. Second place is Tat's where they have the town's best philly cheese steak sandwich.

For ice cream, Molly Moon's wins hands down. They are in Wallingford as well as Capitol Hill.

Enjoy!

ycalumn5• 15 years ago

High achieving computer science folks choose google because it feeds into their existing dogma - "I am smart. I did well at High School - I get into Ivy League - I do well at Ivy League".. Errr now what? I know, let's go where everyone thinks the high achievers go!

Google managed to very effectively be an acceptable reason to quit academia or not pursue a PhD. Good on them, working in the Plex is better than going through the bullshit that Matt dealt with. Doesn't change the fact that if you work at Google you're getting paid at a discount, and probably are a lot more unhappy than that retard who can't figure out how his Google plus account works.

ycalumn5• 15 years ago

You can down vote all you like, but there in lies the truth. Just check with all your academic friends 10+ years older - they'll talk of the lure of Microsoft..

davidw• 15 years ago

> Coming from the Midwest though, I think I would prefer the rain over 3 months of harsh winters.

I'm from Oregon, and to make a long story short, I think I much preferred the winter in Innsbruck, Austria, where we spent a couple of years. It's cold, but relatively dry. You can go out and do stuff in the snow, whereas with 5 C and rain... the only good option is to simply stay indoors.

staunch• 15 years ago

Sounds good to me, except the damn weather. My office is in Santa Monica and the weather is 70s, sunny, and never too humid. We keep the door and windows open and a cool ocean breeze blows in all day.

Silicon Valley has similar weather, so that would be easy, but I don't know if I could handle gloomy weather a big portion of the year.

Google's Santa Monica office is 6 blocks from the beach, same as ours.

ericabiz• 15 years ago

> "My office is in Santa Monica and the weather is 70s, sunny, and never too humid. We keep the door and windows open and a cool ocean breeze blows in all day. Silicon Valley has similar weather, so that would be easy"

Hate to burst your bubble, but as someone who lived in the Valley for 10 years, then San Diego, no, the weather in the Valley is not nearly as nice as SoCal!

San Francisco gets the ocean breeze, though it's more like a freezing cold foggy rain. (We used to have this ongoing joke in SF: "How do you know that person is a tourist? Because he's wearing shorts!") I lived in Pacifica, which was beautiful, and right on the coast, but it was never warm and breezy like SoCal.

The rest of the Valley is a 1-hour+ drive from the coast, and it gets that "inland hot" weather. Not like the IE, but like a mini-IE. You don't want to live in San Jose without air conditioning.

I don't really miss the weather in the Valley!

chrismealy• 15 years ago

SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011 I moved to Seattle about 4 months ago

It's cloudy from November through June. Let's see how he feels in six months.

If you move to Seattle and complain about the weather, please, shut the fuck up and go back to California. We have enough of you whiners up here already.

ycalumn5• 15 years ago

Mahahahahhaahahah

laluser3• 15 years ago

I think this is because most people tend to make a connection through talking about the weather. Hence, picking a side is a normal thing to do, are you for the weather or against it? For people that don't live in Seattle, I find that all they really know about Seattle is their mysterious rainy weather and the space needle, of course.

timr• 15 years ago

"It's cloudy from November through June. Let's see how he feels in six months."

Only if you count July, September and October as sunny. By any conventional standard, "summer" in Seattle lasts from August until early September. I lived in Seattle for seven years, and every single year I was wearing a sweater to the fireworks on July 4.

You get used to it, but that's nothing to brag about.

aaronbrethorst• 15 years ago

I've lived here for eight years now and I still complain about the weather. I grew up in Minnesota, though, not California.

LoveLinux• 15 years ago

As a positive, he lists "one of the best elementary schools in Seattle (John Stanford) just a few blocks away."

As 1 of 2 negatives, he lists "everyone in Seattle appears to be white".

Consider the economic conditions of American cities in which Whites are a minority. Virtually all are economically depressed. Think Detroit, Newark, East St. Louis, East LA, Miami’s Little Haiti, South Dallas, etc.

Unfortunately, most white people would do anything to avoid being called a racist. This includes doing things that go against their group interests at all costs. Most white people are proud of themselves for "not noticing" race unless it's to point out whites behaving badly. I get so exasperated with the whole situation that I don’t know what to do.

kjackson• 15 years ago

I'm not sure what your point is. Is it to say that it takes minorities to create poverty?

Are you saying there aren't poor white communities in the US? What about around the world, like Eastern Europe, or even Greece?

steve8918• 15 years ago

A few years ago, I got a job offer from Amazon. I live in Silicon Valley, and I almost took it, but then I was playing rollerhockey outside at around 7pm, clear blue sky with the sun setting, it was still 75 F. At that instant, I had a "California moment", and I thought to myself "Do I really want to exchange 300 of sunshine for 200 days of rain?" So I didn't take the job.

Now, I would very much like to move to Seattle. I actually grew up near the Pacific Northwest, so I'm used to the rain, but my wife wouldn't be able to handle it, so it's basically a non-starter.

But now that I'm older, I would very much like to live the lifestyle that Seattle has to offer. It's a genuinely beautiful city, and I would very much like to live there at some point in my life.

guga31bb• 15 years ago

>I actually grew up near the Pacific Northwest, so I'm used to the rain, but my wife wouldn't be able to handle it, so it's basically a non-starter.

My situation exactly. Every time we go back up to WA/OR to visit, everything looks so beautiful and green. On the other hand, after living in California for the past 10 years, I find myself wondering if I'd be able to tolerate the lack of sunshine, even after growing up in Seattle.

ycalumn5• 15 years ago

Matt, not sure you read HN, but I know friends of yours and you know friends of mine. Anyways; we walked in the same circles, and both decided to leave CS academia.

I wish you would honestly answer this; did you leave cause academia was bullshit? That's why I left. I regularly talk to grad students all torn up about leaving academia, and I keep telling them that "industry" is just as worthwhile an endeavor as research. I feel like reading about your path you've come to the same conclusion.

socratic• 15 years ago

You seem like a very interesting character, ycalumn throwaway account.

Having read Matt's account of his actions, I agree with your reading. It feels like he came to believe academia was bullshit, but didn't want to hurt his close friends in academia. (Which is fine! You are using a throwaway account, no?)

Over time, I came to view CS academia as bullshit as well, but I am starting to reverse this view. Academia is inefficient, anachronistic, political, bureaucratic, and doesn't do a very good job measuring its own output. However, that seems to apply to countless other institutions, especially institutions with billions of dollars.

Is it possible that academia is a flawed system that sometimes has good results (e.g., new knowledge, startups, quality engineers) that would not have happened otherwise? Or have new inventions like incubators or online education arrived that make it easier to achieve those good results without the old, flawed system?

jasontan• 15 years ago

I spent fourteen years in Seattle until I moved to SF this June. I sorely miss the natural beauty. The air is cleaner, the nature is encompassing, and people are smart and down-to-earth. The rain is manageable -- just don't use an umbrella, otherwise people will know you're new to the city :-)

iqster3• 15 years ago

It is interesting to note that if the Bay area had a high speed rail system, it would alleviate both of Matt's issues (quality affordable housing and reasonable commute times).

natrius2• 15 years ago

High speed rail isn't necessary for that. Cities just need to relax their zoning restrictions to allow more housing to be built where people want to live. Low supply + high demand = high prices.

iqster3• 15 years ago

Given the earthquake prone nature of that area, I am not to crazy about high density housing. For instance, the apartment buildings near the SF Caltain stop scare the heck out of me. Also, I've lived in apartments my whole life. I don't want that for my kids.

jseliger• 15 years ago

This is a perspicacious comment; if you're curious about more, see Edward Glaeser's book The Triumph of the City (http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...), which is quite good on 1) how density promotes idea transmission, 2) the environmental consequences of cities, and 3) transportation problems, which affect (2).

potatolicious3• 15 years ago

Good luck with that. It seems any time anybody wants to redevelop land here in SF it's met with accusations of elitism, gentrification, and lamentations of losing SF's charming Victorian look.

Yes, I get that the Victorian houses are nice, but come on, this city has the most ridiculous housing supply situation I've seen anywhere. It desperately needs a huge injection of housing supply.

But of course, the city is loathe to allow any high density construction except for a few ultra-luxe towers by the waterfront, which solves none of our supply problems.

potatolicious3• 15 years ago

I just moved away from Seattle after spending two years there - it's a place I'd probably go back to once I'm older, but IMO it's not the best place to spend your 20s.

The neighborhoods are nice, there's a lot of nature - you're close to mountains, parks, and water practically always. The weather is relatively mild (if a little dreary for most of the year), and the politics relatively progressive (well, sort of, all of Washington state except Seattle is pretty much very pro-Republican).

The social scene though, leaves a lot to be desired. Google "Seattle Freeze" for a much more in-depth look at the problem than I can write up. Locals deny it exists, anyone transplanted from another city swears by it. I find myself in the Bay Area now and find people far more approachable, and far more willing to make a new friend, whereas in Seattle one finds a lot more polite-yet-distant interactions, none of which ever seem to go anywhere. Making that worse is the fact that the social scene in Seattle is very much locals vs. transplants - which is to say neither side interact with each other very much. For people on the transplant side (where transplants are mostly tech people) it means your circles get pretty homogenous. Nearly all of my friends from my time in Seattle worked in software (either Amazon, Microsoft, or a smattering of other local companies).

Right now I'm still in that place in life where I enjoy making new friends and meeting varied and interesting people, and Seattle was really not doing it for me. I've had a much easier go at it since moving to California, and I can't say I really miss Seattle.

Raphael• 15 years ago

Wow, I thought I was just bad at making friends. But I almost never seem to meet anyone around Seattle.

potatolicious3• 15 years ago

That's kind of one of the more insidious things about living in Seattle, isn't it? You start out bitching about how hard it is to make friends.

And then, after a while, this doubt sneaks into your mind: is it me? Do I suck at this socialization thing a lot more than I realized? Oh God it's me isn't it.

I thought the same, then I moved to SF and the number of people I befriended in the first few weeks is staggering compared to the number of people I managed to meet in the two years I was in Seattle. So...

llambda2• 15 years ago

I'll second the opinion that Seattle has a difficult social scene: it is hard to meet new people and the local culture doesn't seem to have adopted much of a nightlife.

When I lived there most recently I was having a hard time finding places that actually stayed open past 10. Naturally there's a few bars in downtown Seattle and some clubs but on the whole it's a little disappointing if you're in your 20s and looking to have a fun night.

allenp• 15 years ago

Anyone interested in this difficulty in meeting/getting to know people in the northwest may want to look up the phrase "nice-olation" for some articles on this topic.

jinushaun• 15 years ago

The way to beat the freeze is social circles. This is true of any city, but very important in Seattle.

In Seattle, the way to make friends is to join a group activity; whether that is school, work, a social club like Seattle Anti-Freeze, or a social sports club like kickball, hiking or running. Friends of friends is also huge. Seattleites are very insular—whether individually or in a group. They have their friends and don't need any more. That is to say, they already have so much fun with their current friends that they don't have energy for more. So to make friends, you have to already be in the group. You really have to be already "invited" because school or work dictates it. And you really have to be persistent. All my friends are from work, school or friends of friends. You don't meet random people in Seattle.

I recently moved from Seattle to DC and the social scene here is bad for other reasons, namely "what can you do for me?" Everyone is networking and trying to get ahead. No one just wants to hang out.

jordow• 15 years ago

I was originally from Seattle where I was an engineer at Amazon for a couple years before moving to the bay area. Seattle is an incredibly livable place. If you feel yourself getting bothered by the rain, just remind yourself that the rain cleans out the air and produces the greenest, freshest natural beauty that you can find on the West coast. Hands down - better summer climate than anywhere. If you're doing a startup, do you really leave your computer anyways? Just save it for when the weather's nice. I don't know why Seattle doesn't have as large of a startup scene. It's got a huge tech scene, no doubt, and it has every ingredient in the mix to foster a large startup community (smarts, companies, UW, coffee, good beer). Most of all, it seems more business friendly. In particular - the economic climate seems more startup friendly. You could get a really decent place to rent for 800 dollars a month. The transportation has gotten much better with the underground train/bus tunnel. About seven days a week there's almost always a killer happy hour where you could eat gourmet food for under ten dollars - much better than the food I've had in the Bay Area. Also, there's no state income tax. If you're looking to buy a house, I believe that all things considered, your house purchase dollars go five times further in the Seattle area. - And you're just an hour and a half flight away from the South Bay. It seems you could live there and be very frugal, and spend your credit card miles commuting to the bay area once every other week - and still come out ahead. I haven't been back there in a year, but I hear the startup community is getting even stronger. I hope it does well as a startup hub.

akg_67• 15 years ago

We most probably live within few blocks of each other in Seattle.

Let's hope you will still like in couple of years the mostly cloudy, rainy, dreary, no sun weather of Seattle. It is depressing weather 10 months a year, IMO.

Wallingford area has some nice eateries on 45th from Dick's to Tilth. We typically just walk down street for dinner weather permitting. Some of our favorites on 45th are Joule's, Tilth, Issian, Kabul, Chutney, Sutra. You most probably also not far from Tutta Bella on Stone Way or student style eateries on University Ave. Pam's Kitchen and Chilli's are our favorite on Univ Ave.

shalmanese• 15 years ago

Dick's and nice eateries do not belong in the same sentence.

llambda2• 15 years ago

> Mixed in have been some cooler rainy days that feel out of place for the season.

Better get used to it. Seattle has many cool, overcast days (although, surprisingly less precipitation than Chicago or NYC) and is definitely known for its dreary weather. If you had a few sunny days in the Summer it was a damned good Summer.

As a former Seattleite (I was born there and lived there for many years) I understand where you're coming from, apropos the weather: but in all seriousness, learn to love it (or at least how to deal with it) because it's definitely a primary feature of life there. The good news is most of the time the weather is fairly mild, including the Winters. There generally isn't a lot of snow. But it will get cool (even cold) and you will have to deal with the weather never actually being insanely nice for most of the year.

larsberg• 15 years ago

He mentions missing Chinese food, but there's a reason there isn't much of the Good Stuff -- it's all up in Richmond, BC. It's just a couple hour drive north over the border, and is a small town just south of Vancouver with a population that I can't confirm, but appears to be roughly 50% Cantonese. Some of the great food there:

- Food courts in the malls. Seriously, Parker Place if you like it "almost a bit too real" and Yaohan Centre if you and the family want to get a mish-mash of dishes.

- Dim Sum Restaurants. They're a little further south on No. 3 Road, closer to the Nordstrom's, but they're big, clean, fresh, and always packed.

- Hot Pot. Seriously, having tried in NY, Chicago, SF, etc. I've never had reasonable Cantonese-style hot pot until there.

- Buddhist Vegetarian. The hours require some planning, but the Internation Buddhist Temple has stunningly amazing vegetarian food. And it's a great site, even for non-Buddhists.

- Tofu dessert! Yes, at least as of a couple of years ago, there's even a late-night tofu dessert shop (better than it sounds, trust me) in the strip mall area buried about a block south of the Yahoan Centre.

My wife's originally from HK and I lived in Seattle for 6 years, so this food knowledge was crucial to a happy marriage...

Making Seattle my home

Related Stories