HN Explorer

Poll: Where are you currently living?

1132 points by Systemic33 ↗ HN
An interesting question, that was last asked according to search, 3,4 and respectively 5 years ago. [1,2,3]

Please read through the list, to find the choice that describes you the best.

I've tried to be more precise than just continents, but still not every country, but rather regions, more or less divided by culture. I apologize if anyone feel left out, please leave a comment then with what region/country that you feel is significant enough to warrant it's own choice.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=527681

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1640384

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=235585

Remember to upvote the Poll itself, for better results.

316 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] thread
wikiburner
Other:

Antarctica?

I.S.S.?

Sealand?

:)

Edit: Uh oh, New Zealand isn't covered.

Widdershin
I'm from New Zealand, I just picked South East Asia, because that's where our game servers are. Would've appreciated an Oceanic option, OP.

Edit: Nevermind, it's Australia and New Zealand now. You can just replace that with Australasia, for the record.

namenotrequired
I was taught the collective name of Australia and New Zealand was Oceania?
derrida
As an Australian, now we can call any famous NZ ex-patriots, "Aussies". Cheers :-)

ps. In school we are taught either that Australia is the continent or Oceania is the continent, encompassing Australia, New Zealand, Micronesia, Polynesia (of which NZ is sometimes considered a part of) & Melanesia. It used to be this way until I suppose FIFA started considering Australia part of Asia. Now it's just confusing.

If there were an Oceania option, folks in Hawaii could vote for team Oceania.

D9u
New Zealand (Aotearoa) is most definitely within Polynesia, being one of the three corners of the Polynesian triangle, the other two being Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Hawai'i.

I chose US on the poll, but feel that Oceania is more appropriate in a geographical sense, especially since so many Americans don't consider Hawai'i to be a part of "the states." (until it comes to war)

benjamincburns
I'd love to know what percentage of Australasia respondents are kiwis, as I'm heading that way myself soon.
seanmcdirmid
Wouldn't Australasia include New Guinea also?
xtrumanx
Somaliland representing. (Although I didn't bother submitting to the poll. Don't usually bother voting on articles and comments either).
cup
Wow its not often you meet a fellow Somali!
genieyclo
Waa la buuxaa :)

hattip to mahmud

derrida
If rdl (YC S11) see's this, he could vote Sealand. Although I think he may of fallen out with their King and Queen.
gcatalfamo
Italy (or southern Europe)

edit: thanks for adding it to the list!

mseepgood
I always thought that Scandinavia was part of Western Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Europe#Population_of_We...
Systemic33
It is, but I try to divide culturally, and Scandinavia is quite a different bunch from rest of europe. (I'm Danish myself and have lived in Sweden for six years aswell)

This is also why I decided to add southern europe, since they are also quite different from say Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, etc.

icebraining
Unfortunately, it led me to vote for both options, since I only saw the Southern option after having voted for Western (and after all, I'm in the most western European country). Well, I suppose it's not exactly a scientific study either.
bowlofpetunias
To divide it culturally, I would say you would have to go along the lines of Nordic (I've always been told including Finland in Scandinavia is a good way to piss Fins off), Latin, Slavic etcetera.
rtkwe
It might be grouped that way for geography but culturally and demographically so depending on what you want to get out of your survey the distinction could be worth while.
mindcrime
North America, USA, North Carolina, Chapel Hill
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
Systemic33
Depends how well US and Asia region will keep this alive :) it's 4.30 AM here in EU, so if you keep it rolling for maybe 5 hours on front page, I reckon it'll make it around the world.
adamzerner
Not if we upvote it enough to keep it on the front page for a while.
asafira
Any chance this thread will stay high until the morning?

(Meh, I guess probably not...)

shellehs
Why? I think Chinese visitors should be significant amount
PabloOsinaga
I wonder how these results will compare to the geo analytics YC gets for HN
feir
China
auvrw
whoop, whoop!

true fact: among the 100 best-selling books on earth (circa late 2011), there was only one book related to programming.

unsurprisingly, the machine language was C.

the human language? 中文.

EDIT: 不少得, slangin it 从 the, uh, 那个, 四川. (为了说得具体). ok, 完了. 但是, 如果hn有一些城都得人, 真的, 发给我一封短信.

EDIT 二: 刚才意识hn不会发短信, 所以我的电子邮件相信是 ransom@cinafides.com.au

abadcafe
What do you said? You can type English As well.
AsmMAn
You could to increase the countries list, BTW
grobe
Mexico
Systemic33
That would be the option Southern north america :)
shubhamjain
I am from Jaipur, India. Many I times I am detestful of the fact that I don't live in big cities like Mumbai or Bangalore. I don't hear of any programming meetups that happen here, neither there are any conferences, nor any startup that has bubbled up. The first thing that I want to do after my graduation is to move in to a big city because socializing with smart people is the most recurring advice I have heard for ambitious freshers.
akbar501
Moving is a good idea.

I'm from the US, but I spent a substantial amount of time in India when I started by first company. Initially, we were outside of Bangalore (not by much), but enough that the company and I were disconnected from the city.

Around 2004 we moved the company to Bangalore, and I moved with the company.

It was the best move ever.

The cost of living is higher, it's over populated, traffic sucks, and so on in terms of problems. But it's where all of the action is and the people are.

Fast forward to 2012 and I was living 50 minutes outside of San Francisco (over the 80) and Silicon Valley (down the 680). I moved to into the valley to be in the action. Again, best move ever.

In general, go to where the action is. Your thinking on this is sound. There are smart people in Jaipur, but nothing like what you'll find in Mumbai or Bangalore.

Best of luck to you.

sidi
I am curious, what were the barriers (apart from financial) like when you moved to San Francisco? This is assuming you moved your startup over to SF. I ask this since I am starting up in India, and increasingly thinking to relocate to Silicon Valley.
munimkazia
Mumbai is the place to be for a lot of people, but maybe not for core tech and programmers. We don't have a very strong programming community here (though we are trying to build one). We don't have as many tech events and communities as Bangalore. Mumbai has quite a few startups, but again, there are far more in Bangalore. And the worst thing is Mumbai is quite a bit more expensive to live. The rents are very high, probably double of the Bangalore rates. And you don't really get higher salaries to balance this out.

This has been my experience with Mumbai. You may be happy here, depending on what job you get here, and what circle of geeks and friends you find around here. In general, it is a much more happening place than Bangalore.

Edit: Obviously, both of these options are far better than Jaipur. Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi are the places to be for working in tech. You can probably add Pune, Chennai and maybe Hyderabad to that list, but that's it.

crucialfelix
I'm going to be in Mumbai in a few weeks, then going through to Bangalore. I'd like to try to hook up with some people, go to some events and just check things out a bit.

So any tips for social events re tech/startup stuff in Mumbai would be much appreciated.

After that I go on a proper vacation.

vishalkrv
Yes, Bangalore has lot of social and tech meetups where you can meet the like minded people.
jnaut
I agree location is important.

I asked the same question on HN 1450 days ago, see the responses I got: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916622

Jaipur may not be the best place to start at this point in time but it definitely seem to have some future promises to offer.

I would like to bring to your notice that Entrepreneurship/Startup radar has picked up in Jaipur lately. Several events, groups have come up:

Some examples are:

groups:

startup jaipur: https://www.facebook.com/groups/jaipurtechies/

ceo jaipur: https://www.facebook.com/CeoJaipur

startup saturday jaipur: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ssjaipur/

events:

Startup saturday event is happening every month

Startup Jaipur also meets physically , a little infrequently though, since December last year. And I plan to do hackthons and stuff under this (I am one of the founding members and an admin on FB), a little short on bandwidth though, would like to take the lead and try a hand?

CEO Jaipur the first co-working space for/by/of the entrepreneurs started some time back. They have space to host other events too.

Then there were some events from TIE like 'TIE mashup' that recently happened.

more events:

Bringing startup weekend to Jaipur is in process.

Overall, it's heating up but agreeably not as mature or vibrant as Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad or Pune. ( Lived and experienced the first three cities and their meetups personally.)

I am from Jaipur too and I run a startup ( http://startuplabs.io/ ) here.

Let me know if you would like to meetup and hangout.

shubhamjain
Sure. Would love to meet you, throw me a mail at shubham.jain.1@gmail.com.
hiharryhere
Will be interesting to see how this progresses as diff timezones wake up. It's pretty Aus heavy at the moment as people like me procrastinate in the office.
dead_phish
Not to be US-centric, but it would be interesting to see the breakdown between East and West Coasts of the United States.
Systemic33
I would have to agree, I shoul've thought of that. It would have to be in another poll. You can try that some time.
jjsz
Puerto Rico.
bloometal
I hope someone is keeping track of the votes along with the time data. That might be very interesting, as well.
speeder
Not putting Brazil there is kinda silly, specially when it is a country that spans so much of South America that I bet some brazillians will put north south america while others will put south south america... (Also important: brazil vs rest of south america is more relevant, considering brazil went with a fairly unique culture, ie: not hispaniard, also Argentina in comparison to the rest of South America has a very high amount of caucasians, making it also quite unique compared to the rest, although, ie: having a european culture mixed with spain culture, instead of the usual spain mixed with native america)
kutakbash
>Southern North America (eg. Mexico)

>Northern part of South America

>Souther part of South America

Looks needlessly fragmented and imprecise. What is 'Southern part of South America'? Cono Sur? Then Brazilians from Minas Gerais and Porto Alegre are in different groups? Was that the intention? Why 'Southern North America' and not Central America? Where does Caribbean belong? Middle Asia (say, Kazakhstan)? Is Spain Western Europe or Southern Europe? Is Czech Republic Eastern Europe or Western Europe (since you don't offer 'Central Europe' as an option and some Czechs may be unhappy with identifying as Eastern Europeans)? Is Estonia in Eastern Europe? It damn well is in Eastern Europe, but some Estonians identify Estonia as Scandinavian.

Next time you guys should use some well established scheme such as this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme and just link to it in the post so no one is confused.

Systemic33
I wasn't aware of that scheme, I'll remember it for another time, it would pollute the data too much to change it all now.
kutakbash
I guess it would also ruin compatibility with previous polls. Sigh.
erid
So, where would Costa Rica belong, I'm confused.
kyro
I was shocked as well when I read that this survey was part of a randomized double-blind study sponsored by the NIH.
kutakbash
Ha ha good one. Being pedantic is a curse, yes.
pmelendez
Normally it is considered that Venezuela is the northern country of South America, so for me that fragmentation is correct. I just will add Central America to include the Caribbean and countries below Mexico.
irsouza
Yeah, I felt confused, I live in southern Brazil. Is it south enough for the continent?
[deleted]
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V-2
"Is Czech Republic Eastern Europe or Western Europe (since you don't offer 'Central Europe' as an option and some Czechs may be unhappy with identifying as Eastern Europeans)?"

Same with Poland. The Western-Eastern distinction is an artifact of the Cold War, but it doesn't correspond well with the civilizational affiliations and historical experience of Central European nations.

Eg. Poland has rich traditions of democracy and civil freedoms - its Golden Liberty, and later, the first constitution in Europe - while Eastern Europe was typically autocratic.

Then there's being mostly catholic (and not orthodox), then there's the use of Latin alphabet (whereas Eastern Europe tends to use cyrillic), etc.

kutakbash
I'd say this whole regional distinctions thing is utterly mythologized and politically motivated. It's more like branding than anything tangible. No one wants to be associated with the less well off parts of the world and some want to add flair of objectivity to their purely political claims. Like current Russian and Kazakhstani govts pushing all things 'Euroasian', or German strategists inventing Mitteleuropa back then.
V-2
I rest my case as for Central Europe. The main line of division is along Roman vs. Byzantine legacy, and this point of view is not hard to defend

Of course pushing forward the category of Central Europe may stem from a variety of motivations, like some people just fearing the stigma of being "Eastern" as you say.

But this does not by itself invalidate the legitimate justifications for using the concept of Central Europe and it's certainly not enough of a reason to drop it altogether

Strom
I'm from Estonia and I had to vote 'Other'. I don't identify myself as an eastern european nor as a scandinavian. I'm from northern europe, as also classified by your linked UN geoscheme. [1] There is no northern europe poll option however.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme

sampo
I wonder if mostly anyone from "cold war Eastern Europe" countries identify as an Eastern European any more?

Estonians and other Baltic states don't, Poland doesn't. Czech Republic probably doesn't. What about Slovenia, or Croatia, or Macedonia? Or Hungary?

Also maybe Russians identify as Russians and not Eastern Europeans.

guard-of-terra
Russians have entry of their own and then are free to vote Eastern Europe too (poll is multi-select).
PeterisP
I could put all the countries in the Eastern European Timezone as Eastern Europe, but it would put Finland in there as well which would be wierd.
lucasnemeth
Agree. Southern part of South America is very confusing, how south is southern? Is São Paulo south enough? Should I live in Patagonia to mark that?
bloometal
Can we not just ask pg for the data?
mfjordvald
Might not be entirely accurate, I'm currently in China but will show up as being from the UK or US because of my VPN.
gregory144
It will probably be more accurate than doing this poll manually (many people won't submit their data).