I grew up in Portland. Moved to Seattle after Portland. Finally to San Francisco after Seattle.
I will say the article is full of bullshit. Yes, cost of living is drastically lower and the quality of life and the surrounding is not bad at all in any way. But a Silicon Valley / SF? It is not.
If you're like me and you've lived in all 3 areas and grew up spending a huge chunk of your life in each of the 3, you'll quickly realize it's not even close in terms of the culture and resources the bay offers. I can understand the sentiment if you have a family (spouse and kids) and want to find affordable housing and all but lets not kid ourselves, that's not the same as arguing a tech centric hub worthy of comparison to the valley.
I moved from Portland to the Bay Area to take a job at Yahoo! four years ago. After a year and a half, I moved back, and have been telecommuting ever since. A coworker recently moved back to Portland and began telecommuting as well.
Remote collaboration isn't yet as painless and awesome as it has the potential to be, but Skype group video chat (when it works) is almost good enough to make us feel like we're in Sunnyvale when we can't actually be there in person, and IRC and IM are great for low-overhead collaboration.
I've been so much more productive and so much happier since I began working remotely that I can't imagine ever going back to spending five days a week commuting to an office, especially if that office is somewhere other than Portland.
I've known more than one colleague that has commuted from Portland to the Bay Area. In each case they were older men with wives and children that didn't want to (or couldn't) leave Portland. They rented small, cheap places during the week then spent the weekends at home with their families.
He did move to Portland, however. "I live in Portland, Oregon. Before that, I lived in San Francisco. I grew up around Washington, DC." http://al3x.net/about.html
Your point being? The article is from April of 2010 when he was with Twitter, in May he joined Bank Simple. The parent comment is about where he was working not where he was living and I pointed out the age of the article for that reason.
Note to self: tread lightly when commenting on the "community" Hacker News. The parent topic was about moving away from SF. Sincere apologies if my simple clarification torqued your jaw.
Not trying to come off gruff or anything, I was just posting quickly between meetings and not necessarily proofreading for "voice" in the message. I don't see how your "clarification" actually clarified anything. The article says he moved to Portland, his profile says he moved to Portland. There doesn't seem to be any confusion about where he lives. The parent comment, not article, asked about his employer not his location.
I will say the article is full of bullshit. Yes, cost of living is drastically lower and the quality of life and the surrounding is not bad at all in any way. But a Silicon Valley / SF? It is not.
If you're like me and you've lived in all 3 areas and grew up spending a huge chunk of your life in each of the 3, you'll quickly realize it's not even close in terms of the culture and resources the bay offers. I can understand the sentiment if you have a family (spouse and kids) and want to find affordable housing and all but lets not kid ourselves, that's not the same as arguing a tech centric hub worthy of comparison to the valley.