‘Where ambition goes to die’: These tech workers flocked to Austin during the pandemic. Now they’re desperate to get out.::Drawn by the promise of an emerging tech hub, some tech workers who flocked to Austin found a middling tech scene, subpar culture, and scorching heat.
Austin is a nice city. With all due respect, and as someone who grew up in Texas but now lives in NYC, it is exactly this kind of condescension that makes a lot of Texans dislike people from the coasts.
That’s fine with me. I’ve lived in Michigan, Tennessee, Kansas, and California. There are lots of good people in each of the first three as well as lots of small minds. The Bay Area feels right to me.
I remember seeing a FB post from someone in Kansas saying that they felt that anyone who couldn’t be happy there didn’t really try. You can’t imagine my rage at that statement: blaming me for my depression when I didn’t fit in during my school years. What a joke. No, I can’t be happy in that environment long-term.
The Bay Area would have offered me so much more opportunity for happiness as a teen, such that it’s practically stupid. I feel schadenfreude at Texas getting reminded that it isn’t hot shit.
I feel terribly for the people who were deceived and have regrets about their situation. Still, they did it to themselves. For all the negatives on the west coast, it’s a paradise to me in terms of opportunities for work and recreation and finding similarly-minded people and making friends.
Fair enough. I think it’s okay if you’ve experienced a place, given it a shot, decided it wasn’t for you, and moved away.
One thing I’ve noticed in NYC however, is how many people have an uninformed and strong default opinion that anywhere besides the west or east coast in unlivable, and that bothers me.
Your comment is reasonable, but a lot of the comments to this post reflect that same caustic attitude and it saddens me.