data.insights.ideas

If you live or are interested in living in New York City, do yourself a favor and read this post first followed by this captivating discussion here.*

On money in NYC:

“Maybe its not all about money, but its definitely more about money. Coming from Wisconsin and working in Manhattan, I find my midwestern frugalness is completely alien to people. Time is money here, there is no doubt about it. Walking three blocks and taking a subway ride gets thrown out the window in favor of a $20 cab ride. Its the small stuff but it adds up. When a city suffers a shortage of BMWs after Wall Street bonuses come out, its hard to say its not about money.”

On rent in NYC:

“While rent is “extreme” for people who don’t live here, you should also consider that we generally don’t have the same expenses as people in the burbs or elsewhere. We don’t own cars, we don’t buy gas, etc. That right there knocks $500-750 off your living expenses. Furthermore, you need to consider rent in NYC as a culture tax because no where else in the world will you find anything remotely similar in terms of fashion, design, art, food, etc. You might think you’re approximating it with the Olive Garden in suburbia, but you aren’t even close.”

On finding talented software engineers in NYC:

“Frankly, it’s almost impossible to find good engineers in NYC. The banks do take them all, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to start up in the city, it is just harder.”

On Madison Ave. agency life in NYC:

“I’ve worked in such environments, and as much as I enjoyed the work when I was able to do it, the reality was that we wound up wasting a lot of time spinning our wheels because we accidentally stepped on each other toes. As a result, I wasn’t able to do the work I wanted to do, and was hired to do, most of the time that I was there. So the affection wore off, and I gave up and left once I saw the writing on the wall.”

On Silicon Valley in NYC:

“The thing is, any reasoning that assumes Silicon Valley is where it’s at ignores all the TechCrunch articles about “the crisis in venture capital” and the inability of the VCs to find companies that need their money to lift off at all in the commodity-hardware/open-source-software era. It’s very, very unlikely that the Valley-centric monoculture of the past will continue to characterize the startup scene. NY has a startup scene, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Edinburugh, London, every place I’ve been to or met people from in the last ten years has a startup scene. Even Santa Fe, New Mexico, an isolated mountain city of only 60,000 people, counting daytime commuters, has a startup scene.”

*It also helps if you’re interested in technology and a startup scene. :)

July 08, 2008, 10:17pm

It’s amazing how we latch onto the intangible. We enjoy things that we cannot touch (beautiful weather) or taste (the spatial arrangement of living quarters) or, for that matter, any sense within our natural repertoire.

I couldn’t help but think of the intangible when reading Paul Graham’s most recent essay around industrial cities their correlation to individual ambition. According to Paul:

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.

What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you’ve been meaning to.

When you ask what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be more powerful.

That’s not quite the same message New York sends. Power matters in New York too of course, but New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. In Silicon Valley no one would care except a few real estate agents. What matters in Silicon Valley is how much effect you have on the world. The reason people there care about Larry and Sergey is not their wealth but the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone.

As 10,000+ college graduates begin to transcend the streets of New York over the next two months, they have no idea what’s about to hit them: “You should be hipper. You should be better looking. You should be richer.” These are the underlying messages of a city so attractive to the aspiring workforce, a city “with a fair number of smart people, but diluted by a much larger number of neanderthals in suits.”

However, if you’re strong enough, smart enough, you can make your own path and dodge “neanderthals in suits” along the 6 train downtown. The returning value on intangible assets like knowledge, ideas and passion push you above the “richer” meritocracy of New York City to a place that’s only rivaled by the company you keep.

I’m fortunate enough to abide by, and have amazing friends who appreciate the intangible.

May 28, 2008, 12:15pm