Ask HN: Cities underserved by tech jobs?

Tucson. We have the University of Arizona here but most of the city is plagued with terrible sales positions and very few tech jobs. Tech jobs here are limited to Raytheon, the university itself and the small IBM office out here.

Sacramento

Chattanooga, city government and non profits are itching to be supportive, small but enthusiastic engineers community, super high quality of life.

Pittsburgh, PA

Oak Ridge, TN has a national lab campus with the fastest super computer in the world which is close to one of the only nuclear power plants planned to be constructed in the near future. There is relatively little VC funded tech compared to the huge amount of government funding. Low taxes, cheap power, plenty of water, and a high density of researchers make it seem like fertile ground to me.

I'd think just about anywhere in the Midwest with the possible exceptions of Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Madison, though the last two could potentially use a tad more diversity.

Albany, NY.

Lots of technical people from semiconductor, IBM refugees and the various companies supporting state government. Possible destination to woo people sick of NYC and Boston.

Kansas City.

Great place to live, but tech dominated by a few large employers. Hell, I have +20 years RF hardware design experience (VLF - mmWave) and know some GNU Radio.

https://github.com/madengr

Phoenix. Tons of transplants from SF have moved here already, ASU is nearby, Sky Harbor has tons of flights going to all of the tech hubs in the US, cost of living is affordable and there's a decent amount to do here as well.

We have a tech scene, but I wouldn't consider us a big hub at the moment. Most companies just have support or administrative staff here.

The entire Mountain West. Bozeman has a pretty decent, and growing tech scene. Missoula is okay (shoutout Submittable and a few others).

If you want to test SDR, you want to be within driving distance of somewhere with low density of people to reduce background RF noise. I once visited a very odd bespoke WiFi Antenna maker, he lived out the back of beyond so he could do RF measurement on his wire thingummyjigs.

So I'd be chosing a mid-west population centre with good roads into the cornfields

Chicago is a real city with skyscrapers and trains and everything. Any experience you want - whether white-picket-fence suburbia, downtown glass-and-steel high rise, or trendy urban neighborhood with street life - is available at within a reasonable housing and commute time budget. The tech opportunities there are concentrated in Office Space-type cost center IT on one hand, and commodities trading on the other, so an engineering-first company would be highly attractive. You might get some domain-specific talent re: radios from the ghost of Motorola.

Chicago belongs in the same breath as NY/SF/LA, so wouldn't be seen as a huge step down for someone relocating, but is drastically cheaper.

Tampa, FL

Oklahoma City, OK / Tulsa, OK (yes it's a real city, no we don't all ride horses)

Decidedly not a "tech center", but we do have a very solid and thriving local tech community: https://www.techlahoma.org

It seems like a mid sized Midwestern city could fit the bill. Grand Rapids, MI or Des Moines, IA both seem like good fits to me. (Colleges, low unemployment, spacious to support growth, ripe for more tech companies) I base this off the thought to "help the city". So a large Midwestern city (Chicago/Indianapolis/St Louis/Kansas City) would see little impact from as few as 50 workers. Likewise in a West Coast city with Bay Area expats. And East Coast with abundance of Gov't Contractor tech jobs. I don't know the South as well so can't speak to any good candidates there. Also am biased towards the Midwest.

Houston is going through big changes, the local economy is diversifying from oil into renewables and other sectors. There are quite a few maker spaces and meetups around here. There are lots of interesting startups, lots have to do with space, DoD, and energy, but there are other flavors too.

Atlanta has a budding tech scene. Georgia Tech is a great research institution and it happens to produce a bunch of radio engineers. I know several that work in the field of SDR / FPGA.

Atlanta is a great place to live. Super affordable cost of living, great food and music scenes, and offers a ton of things to do. It's a city in a forest -- there are so many trees it's unbelievable. There's lots of hiking, kayaking, climbing, and boating within an hour's reach of the city.

Atlanta has so much room for growth, too. People won't get priced out anytime soon.

There's a lot of diversity here, too! Ethnic, career, interest, lifestyle. You name it. Atlanta has the least amount of monoculture I've seen. There are so many different types of people here.

And I've already said it's cheap, but anecdotally: I own a 2bd/2ba 2,000 sqft condo in the city with 25' ceilings and floor to roof windows with city views. My mortgage is only $2,000/mo. It's directly on the Beltline, a mixed use running/biking trail that surrounds the city and is one of the best things about Atlanta. I run to work everyday.

I love the life here.

Come to Atlanta! We'd love to have y'all! I'd be happy to give you a tour if you come out this way.

Colorado Springs. There's a handful of tech companies but they're actively trying to court more. We just got a Formstack office recently. There are a handful of grants available at the state level as well. The community is one of the most open and giving I have worked in. Let me know if you want an intro to people at the Economic Development Office or otherwise.

Columbus, Ohio has the best quality of life I've ever experienced. I've lived in NJ/NYC, Boston, and now SoCal. If I could work for my company while living in Columbus, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

It actually reminds me a lot of Austin before people figured out that Austin was cool.

Rochester, NY. Very affordable real estate, many of the prime areas of the city and suburbs are served by gigabit fiber, and between local universities and industry a surprising amound of technical talent is present in the area: some recently graduated, some the legacy of Kodak, Xerox, and other older companies, and some from defense firms like Harris, ITT, etc. The quality of life is very high with good restaurants, many local parks, festivals, and strong cultural institutions (great indie cinema, and a world-class orchestra). The costs are low, and it's still reasonably close to NYC and Boston in distance and culture. Sure it has winter, but it also has <$200k Victorian homes and tree-lined streets.

Madison, WI might not be as well known as it should. Big engineering, math, and CS programs at the university, but still limited tech-job listings. The state is only just beginning to come around to supporting startup businesses, so there is some buzz. Recently got a non-stop route to SFO.

Really great location, between a group of lakes, and some really great cultural options for a small city.

Epic is here. Some other names too but I thought someone should add it to the responses.

Wilmington, NC[1].

Wilmington is a smaller city (population around 112,000) and doesn't have a great tech scene today - although it is growing. UNC-W has been doing a lot to support the local entrepreneurial scene and a thriving startup scene is emerging there. Even better, in Wilmington you have beaches all around: Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, and Kure Beach right next door, and then you have Topsail Island to the north, and the Brunswick County Beaches (Long Beach, Yaupon Beach, Holden Beach, Ocean Isle Beach, Sunset Beach) just to the south. Calabash is 45 minutes away if you want real, honest-to-god, genuine Calabash style seafood.

Anyway, back to Wilmington itself... it has the "college town" atmosphere since UNC-W is right smack in the heart of town, so there's a thriving nightlife, especially downtown around Front Street and the river area.

And if you do need to pop up to RTP for something, you're only ~2 hours away via direct shot up I-40. Likewise, if you need to go to Barstow, CA for some reason, you just jump on I-40 and drive 2,554 miles and you're there!

Disclaimer: I'm a little biased, as I was born in Wilmington, grew up near Holden Beach, about 30 miles from Wilmington, and attended UNC-W. So Wilmington is "home" to me in a sense. Yes, I left for the greener pastures of RTP, but that was almost 20 years ago. If I were that age again, living in Wilmington now, I might just stay.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington,_North_Carolina

Detroit is such a great city. Housing is insanely cheap. Great for sports. Great lakes. Close to Canada so you can get cheap meds. You should consider it. They're really hungry for tech talent, and it's a swing state.

For "embedded Linux systems and software defined radio systems", Florida's Space Coast (Brevard county) makes sense. If you can be competitive, you might be able to swipe lots of people from Harris. They are in Melbourne (Florida!) and Palm Bay.