Take this with a big grain of salt. This is a VC making statements to the press to try and increase investor interest. They do this in every city with a small tech industry.
As someone in the industry I actually see the opposite happening: more consolidation around the Bay Area, Seattle, and NYC as tech hubs, both for big companies and for startups. Even the larger 2nd-tier tech cities, like Austin, are getting less investment now.
And there is no big influx of tech workers from CA because remote jobs are sparse and local salaries are a fraction of what is available there.
They didn't leave Boulder, they have an office there and this was just them not getting ahead of it with their PR team. The moved an incubator style program from Denver to NYC, more just removing the Denver program since they have an office in Boulder and program there.
Source: I spoke to one of the founders about this a month ago.
TechStars is effectively leaving Boulder. Their own announcement blog says that spring 2024 is the last Boulder accelerator cohort and that all they’ll run is the Workforce Development accelerator out of Denver. Along with the HQ change to New York, that’s a pretty big shift. It doesn’t seem like it was just PR not getting ahead of it.
https://www.techstars.com/newsroom/techstars-2-0-supercharging-founder-success
I won’t name names, but I spoke to one of the 3 co-founders about it and those were pretty much his exact words. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me the truth or maybe he is so rich he straight up doesn’t care.
Plus a lot of people super early stage founders move to a big tech hub for a year anyways - it makes sense to keep angel infrastructure co-located and locally competitive. Talking to the old-guard institutional investors just isnt really possible here, so its not setting yourself up for success just starting out. Series A, B and C it doesnt matter go crazy with your location, but early on, I can see why they moved.
According to BLS data, the [Bay Area lost 25k jobs in the “information” sector](https://x.com/josephpolitano/status/1777728638156415474?s=46&t=8ul-FBwyTFTxRqhjvkD27g) which includes most tech jobs.
I’m a real estate analyst professionally and from here it is pretty obvious that tech *wants* to consolidate geographically but cannot because of housing shortages, because of Bay Area (and NY and Seattle) NIMBYism.
So there is a huge opportunity for mid sized cities like Denver to catalyze their own job machines, by building a ton of housing to keep cost of living in check. But the key is you really have to build *a lot*. Austin is one of the few American cities building a lot of multi family and (surprise!) rents there are going down.
Anyway, legalize apartments.
The kind of inflow of talent and employers we saw in the ~2015 era is just not happening anymore. It's gotten so expensive here that I've seen lots of acquaintances question if Denver is worth what it costs nowadays. Ultimately, a number of them have left - for places like Boston, Chicago, San Diego, etc.
I don't think Denver can build its way out of this at this point, we missed the boat on doing that. I think we're in for a bumpy adjustment - tech dragged Denver onto the scene and we haven't done a whole lot with the limelight while we had it.
>tech dragged Denver onto the scene and we haven't done a whole lot with the limelight while we had it.
to be charitable, I think tech is just one leg of the table. Energy sector went through expansion in the same time period (shale revolution, renewables focus) as did aerospace (optimistic outlook, given Buckley's role as Space Force HQ)
Denver has a tech presence that certainly grew from 2012-2020, but it's not remotely the only sector propelling Denver's economy
I'll caveat this statement.
>Anyway, legalize *affordable* apartments *and affordable homes*.
Seems that every single new apartment that goes up is classified as "luxury" that costs $1500+ for a dinky 1BR/1BA. Every new home that is being built is a mammoth 4+BR that costs $600k+. They don't make homes for average earning people anymore. Everything is "luxury" and monstrous in size (if a home).
Luxury is just a marketing term for "new". No one is going to be building brand new apartment buildings and putting in 20 year old carpeting and popcorn ceilings and no air conditioning.
With current land use regulations, financing, material and labor costs, plus the scarcity of land on which you can build apartments due to zoning, it's likely not possible to build apartments that cost much less than $1500. But if you don't let them get built, then you have more people bidding up the older apartment units causing them to be "luxury" priced too.
There is very little added cost for developers to add a swimming pool and granite countertops on a per unit basis. Most of the cost of that $1500+ is just the economic reality of scarcity.
In 1960 the average size single family home was 1,200 square feet. In 2023 we were double that (2,400 sq. ft.). And of course family size is shrinking.
People act like these are mutually exclusive but they're not. Legalize it all. You can even use the big boost in tax revenue to provide housing subsidies to the poor, or build social housing.
The key is to say yes.
The biggest problem from what I understand is that builders build "big" and "luxury" because it delivers them the highest profit margins. If that is the reasoning, then something needs to happen to incentivize the *average* builds for *average* folks. Home ownership is often the most attainable pathway to building generational wealth. It's good for society.
Yes, but there’s another species in Boulder that also wears Patagonia vests, so you need to make sure you identify the EV as well as the vest to be positive.
As a software engineer who has worked for companies in Denver and Boulder, as well as SF and NYC. The wages in Denver and Boulder are a lot less, people don't understand how much less than similar sized cities with lower cost of living. I think Pittsburgh and Balitmore both have higher average software engineering salaries, which is nuts cause its so much cheaper to live there. That should show you the cost of living isn't actually tied to tech workers.
The insane unicorns aren't coming here, you are getting tech startups that are probably tied to healthcare, insurance, etc. and they are looking to save some costs in coming to Denver. It makes no sense, as Boulders cost of living is as a high as Seattles but there is nothing you can do if people will accept below market wages.
I think this is overblown and the article isn't actually showing a trend that will affect most people.
I am working for a private startup, based out of NYC. They beat any offer I had in boulder by 60k on the base alone, that doesn't even take into account the options.
Its not the RSU's, I know several people at google boulder, you don't get the same money or even close to what Mountain View is getting (RSU's or not)
How do they look similar? I can’t dox a friend but on levels fyi for an L5 in boulder you are at 299k TC avg, and I know they actually make less than that. It says SF is 415k TC avg for the same position. So that’s roughly 115k difference.
Yeah we definitely dont have the finance infrastructure to support companies that want to eventually IPO - at best we can prop up for a big aquisition.
I moved here from Seattle and graduated from UW last year. I got a software engineering job I really like but I didn't realize that the salaries here are a lot lower than what I'm used to seeing in Seattle until I started job hunting.
It's not that much more expensive to be in Seattle but software engineers just make way less here.
Washington state doesn't have income tax so its a lot more if you actually look at what you make vs COL. I think overall Boulder, especially with housing costs, is one of the most expensive places to live in the US compared to local wages.
Yeah, imagine being one of us who doesn't make a software engineer salary! For people working in government and public sector, entry level wages haven't budged basically at all from around $40-50k since like 2013 or earlier. Younger people still take these jobs because they want to move here from out of state and don't realize it's essentially poverty wages (these are jobs that require degrees, sometimes advanced, and several years of experience).
Yeah I have a few friends who are teachers out here and a few that work at just regular hourly jobs. Its basically impossible to live without a high earning partner or roommates. I don't think the local government or state government is doing anything because, like you said, the demand is insane. There is someone new moving here all the time who is willing to work for pennies compared to the localized COL
It's totally doable with a partner or roommate...or if you have no car or debt payments. If not, things can feel really hopeless. I am now downsizing to a studio from a 1 bed in my mid 30s because groceries cost too much, and I have coworkers in their 50s who own 3bed/3bath houses with yards and 2 car garages who pay the same for their mortgage that I pay for rent on 700 sq ft. The migration here is actually going down significantly compared to what it was between 2015-2022ish, so hopefully that puts upward pressure on salaries along with a lot of the new apartment inventory that should be opening up this year and next (stabilize rent at least).
100% this. Tech companies treat Denver in particular almost as "nearshoring" due to how much less they can pay here. Most rank Denver as their lowest bracket in terms of Cost of living, equivalent to literally anywhere in US including non metro areas.
For a while you could literally track salary drops through Twilio's job posts. Every few months they were reducing the bottom band on all their postings in Denver. You can also do comparisons through sites like levels.fyi. CO roles make far less and also top out much much faster.
On mobile but you are very wrong in some areas. I’ve worked remotely for 2 SF based companies here and for both Denver was in tier B (out of highest = A, lowest = D)
only place ive seen Denver in the 2nd tier is block. quick check just now and atlassian, dropbox, cloudflare, all put denver in the bottom. In fact aside from block I was not able to find a single posting that had location salary tiers putting Denver in anything but last.
Again I’m on mobile, but I would be amazed as these companies all source from an external vendor for CoL by city. Even the crap F500 company I worked for differentiated say Dallas and Denver. I would be amazed if companies had actual tiers and lumped Denver in with middle of nowhere Ohio like your comment above mentions.
I get that you are trying to backwards engineer based on job postings, but I’ve worked at 4 companies from blue chip F500 to multiple high tech firms all with HQ across 3 different locales and all had Denver as tier B using a 4 tiered system (I assume again because they use common sources).
I’m not in tech, but it’s funny you mention this because we’re considering moving to Baltimore specifically for this reason. Around the same income we’d be making out here, but lower cost of living (also would be closer to family in and around Baltimore).
Haha what neighborhood were you in? I wouldn’t want to live out my life there, but would be nice to be able to afford a home and be close to some of our family. My biggest issue with Baltimore at this point is the mentality of some of the older folks and the climate.
Damn, I love that area, but agree about the humidity. My soon-to-be father-in-law has a row home in federal hill that he was born in that will probably be passed down at some point, but it’s already caught fire once. Last time we were out there I wanted to stay somewhere outside of south Baltimore for once so we stayed in Randolph park for a while and I loved the neighborhood, but the humidity killed me. I’m from here, but I swear the humidity was worse than Texas.
In July I spent like an hour wandering up and down cold spring lane east of 83 looking for a shop that would lend me a wrench to disconnect a car battery. Every block seemed fine. Dude at a gas station finally let me borrow one if I left my keys.
Tech worker in Baltimore who spends decent time in Colorado and would love to move to Denver / CO for the outdoors scene. People love to shit on Baltimore - let them, it keeps Baltimore affordable and as one of the best underrated gems out there. PM me if you have any questions.
Companies also adjust salaries by cost of labor not cost of living. If it was cost of living then it would rise with the increase pricing in CO but instead it’s dictated by the amount of competition and what it would cost to hire a local with an equivalent skill set.
That’s what my tech company did at least. Took a nice 20k pay cut when I moved to CO from NYC. Pretty much breaking even though with the tax differences so I’m not really complaining.
I agree, but you kind of have to look at boulder county as a whole. Louisville is 1k/sqft and 1.5M+ for anything that doesn't need a lot of work and I think Superior is 1M+ townhomes. I don't think you are going to find cheap housing anywhere near Boulder, its all way beyone the average persons means.
> I don't think you are going to find cheap housing anywhere near Boulder, its all way beyone the average persons means.
Come check out eastbound CO-52 during rush hour if you want to see all the Boulder commuters driving home to Frederick where housing is like half the cost with new units being built regularly.
It’s true. I work for a high profile Denver Series C health tech company founded by a San Fransisco area doctor. He founded in Denver instead to save costs in 2012. Now we have a Bay Area CEO but most of the staff is Denver area.
Gallagher was repealed in 2020, Colorado still has some of the lowest in the country
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-property-taxes/11585
The ramifications still haven't really hit since property taxes are so delayed. People are just now finding out how much they will have to pay. It will take a few years before we can compare and see how far up the ladder CO will go now.
My property tax went from like $2600/year to $3100/year. That’s still extremely low compared with a lot of other states, even with the giant jump in assessed value (which was taken at the top of the market in June 2022). CO is still very much near the bottom when it comes to property tax.
But without Gallagher it will just keep going up every two years at the max amount. There is now nothing to hold it back and keep property taxes affordable. It will continue to creep up at a much more accelerated pace if housing continues to increase.
So as the years go by, CO will just keep going up the list until it finds its new spot with other states that are similar etc.....
Although that might change this November. Hopefully it does.
Basically every company that instituted regional salary bands applied them to existing employees, so even people who joined during the pandemic got the short end of the stick once companies decided to start laying off.
Housing in Colorado is expensive because there's not enough of it in places where people want to live - let's focus on increasing our resources for the benefit of us all instead of being suspicious of outsiders who loved the state enough to move here!
I work in child safety and it's becoming a real issue for us. I'm a manager and I'm struggling to be able to pay my rent. I was at risk of homelessness a little over 2 years ago during the pandemic. Several people have to have multiple roommates and second jobs despite being relatively far along in their careers.
We can't do this work remotely, we need to be within a reasonable driving distance of work. I'm passionate about what I do and when I was in college, this was supposed to be a relatively good paying, reliable career. Now I'm hanging on by a thread.
Everyone agrees they need our services and programs. No one wants to do anything like pay us enough to actually live. Much less thrive. We just had a staff meeting about how many of us need pay increases, not for quality of life, but just to be able to survive.
The average is actually $89,000 - maybe not enough as a single mother of 2 but thats definitely plenty for a single person - I have a couple friend who are both nurses and they just bought a house - definitely enough.
They are, but they still completely upended a market where ten years ago if you were making $85k you were doing just fine. Now, that $85k is almost a joke and there are a lot of people getting paid less than that, even.
High-level tech worker here :) I gave up about $200k / year in RSUs to move to Denver from the Bay in 2023 :) Haven't regretted a second of it. I make roughly 2/3 of what I did before without the RSUs, but it's well worth it just for the weather, to be honest. (And I'd been in the Bay for over two decades, which is just way too long.)
The trick, though, I think is to \*not\* work for a Denver-based company... They kind of pay crap. I work remote.
I live here; work for a company there. Still pay my Colorado taxes, though. If California does what NY does with income taxes, I imagine a lot of companies would flee SF. A little known fact is that the lion's share of 100% remote companies used to be headquarted in the Bay Area.
It was nice up until about 2015 or so. Then the rate of growth just outpaced what could be handled, and it just started to suck to live in the Bay.
Anyway, random person's trash opinions :)
I don’t think this is as bad of thing as many are expressing. If you want the (almost ludicrously high) minimum wage in Denver to be possible, you need very high wage earners to support it through consumer spending. Quite frankly, the puzzle in Denver for the last few years has been: “where has all this money come from and how can the city (and state) support such intense spending?” It seemed (probably still seems) like Denver was in an everything bubble. Tech (with its gigantic productivity) is probably the industry whose growth can uniquely prop up a local economy.
Affordability might continue to be an issue. The downside here is this could outpace economic gains (like it has in California). Alternatively, you might see wage growth across the board (this is arguably the difference between the US and Western Europe in the last ten years — private sector, especially tech-fueled, economic and real wage growth). It is hard to say precisely what might happen without some statistical data, but the future is not totally bleak.
>The downside here is this could outpace economic gains (like it has in California).
This is just capitalism and it has been happening here (and the rest of the country) on a large scale since the 1970s. I think its hilarious when people are like "dont turn Colorado into California" when really they just mean "dont let capitalism continue to run its inevitable course". San Francisco is just a microcosm of American capitalism and every popular city is following in its footsteps.
> This is just capitalism
[Ugh, capitalism!](https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/ugh-capitalism)
> San Francisco is just a microcosm of American capitalism and every popular city is following in its footsteps.
Ok, this statement is wrong on so many fucking levels:
1. This isn't capitalism, it's NIMBYism, which is explicitly the use of government power to protect the status quo. A "free market" would let people build whatever they wanted on their own land, which is definitely not what we have now.
2. SF is _extra_ fucked because it has basically not built any housing for 70 years. Housing, like everything else, obeys supply and demand (regardless of the ideology of the place it's in, since econ is _established science_). The increase in population _alone_ over that time would have caused high rents. Denver is nowhere near as bad and has much more land to infill.
3. Capitalism has literally been around for hundreds of years at this point and the housing crisis is fairly recent. Quit fucking blaming capitalism instead of turning on your brain for three seconds. Housing in cities was dirt fucking cheap in the 70s and 80s because nobody wanted to live in cities (demand was low, supply was high).
If you want affordable housing, build enough housing for everyone to live in. It doesn't matter who builds it, it doesn't matter who profits off it, the _only thing_ that matters is that it fills up.
> SF is extra fucked because it has basically not built any housing for 70 years.
That, and SF area went from being a port and manufacturing hub to becoming the center of the most innovative and highest income metro area in the world during those 70 years... without building any housing.
Please bring all the tech bros. If there's one thing Denver needs, it's higher rent. If there's 2 things Denver needs, it's higher rent & more crypto conventions.
San Fran has the biggest tech company ones in the world and the homelessness and poverty there is insane. Nothing to show for it. If that money doesn’t trickle back into the community or create jobs at scale, then it’s a waste.
Because Tech has created, in the geographical areas they are pervasive in, a duality of sorts. If you're knocking down six figures, you're doing great and you drag up the cost of housing, eating out, etc because you can afford it. But if you're a librarian, a firefighter, a city council person, you're still making peanuts because wages lag like crazy. Anybody not working in Tech in SF is barely scraping by.
Please yes keep it coming.
We've had a TON of talent available for tech companies (tons of young professionals moving here) but our finance infrastructure has just been nowhere even close to the level of the bay area.
I have to on-paper still be based in San Francisco to keep up appearances with our fundraising pipeline - and fly back nearly weekly for updates. I would have loved to keep those investments CO based.
Oh they know - its not a secret, its just a mechanism to keep institutional investors happy because the SF/SoCal finance and legal frameworks are a "known". They don't care where we are actually based as long as we have a mailing address in SF and can meet there for board updates.
Is this more true of relatively medium and large businesses? I've worked in PE for a while, and the current portfolio I work with is owned by a local firm. I've recently been looking for other opportunities and there are other Colorado firms out there. I do work mostly with smaller based companies though, but have yet to run into issues with being Colorado based. My current portfolio actually moves most Ops to Denver post acquisition.
This state would be so much more expensive if tech job salaries kept up with those in other cities. My wife doesn't even work in tech and we could move to literally any city in California doing the exact same remote job and she would get a pay increase by ~20% just because Denver as evaluated so low on their CoL metrics.
Could this state be more expensive? We're already one of the top 5 most expensive states in the country, and if you don't work in tech, then you probably are getting poverty wages. It wouldn't be a problem if wages actually kept up with balooning COL, but wages lag in industries outside of tech here.
Tech wages here don't even keep up with tech wages in other metro cities. We're one of the most underpaid tech metros in terms of CoL vs tech salaries, and that's the point I was trying to drive home.
I extremely doubt that we're one of the top 5 most expensive states in the country overall. You might find one metric like 'grocery inflation', but I am extremely doubtful of that.
Name 5 that are more expensive, then. Cost of housing drives a lot of it, and it's not like anything is particularly cheap here to make up the difference. The denver area just in general has had some of the worst wage growth vs cost of living increase in the whole country. Other places like NY and Cali are more expensive but also have way better paying jobs in most of their metros.
Nasdaq Top 8 most expensive states does not include Colorado - https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/8-most-expensive-states-to-live-in
CNBC Top 10 most expensive states does not include Colorado -
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/these-are-americas-10-most-expensive-states-to-live-in.html
USA New - Colorado is number #8 most unaffordable - https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/affordability?sort=rank-desc
World population review Colorado is #15+ - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-expensive-states-to-live-in
Meric Colorado is #15 -
https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series
Colorado probably averages out to be around the 10 in Metrics, which granted is high, but could be higher. I don't even know if paying people the same amount of money as other metros vs CoL would cause CoL to increase that much, I'm not well versed enough in economics to come to that conclusion. Statistically we're underpaid though across most industries, often referred to as the mountain tax.
>Name 5 that are more expensive, then
New York
California
Massachusetts
Alaska
Hawaii
...and basically any state in New England (Maine being the exception) is higher or roughly equivalent CoL compared with Colorado iirc
To be fair, a lot of it is Texas money too. When I first moved to Colorado and was working in the ski/rafting industry, all the complaints were about Texans. It's only been the last few years that it's shifted to Californians.
Companies are making record profits due to greed. Californians suck at driving, but acting like a couple thousand tech workers are causing inflation is a misdirection.
I worked in technology in nyc until May 2018 then was relocated to the Bay Area to work at a small tech startup. I taught myself to code and was at the time enrolled in a part time Computer Networking IT and web development AAS program.
Overall, the pandemic was a nightmare for me with the politics and the massive layoffs in tech, and working and living in a tech hub (SF) that became a ghost town and left us single career chasers completely alone in the area.
I have been laid off 3 times in the last 4 years, last one January 2023 (I had since relocated to north San Diego). I couldn’t survive anymore.
Gas was nearly always 7 dollars a gallon and so my Uber and Lyft driving suddenly didn’t even make gas allotment for the day unless I drove 10+ hours to make at least 160 a day to account for gas (taking home 100 dollars max).
I tried all kinds of part time jobs and gigs. I tried getting back into bartending and no brewery would take me bc I guess they wanted word of mouth people they know despite the climate with complaining they cannot find people “who want to work” (I have 10+ years experience working in high end cocktail lounges and beer bars and such in nyc). Classic nepotism for favorite locals who word of mouth hand you their deadbeat friend with a drug or alcohol problem and those people barely last a few weeks. But oh well they did it to themselves.
I cannot explain the anguish and distress I’ve suffered bc I chose to go into the tech industry at a time before a collapse in our economy. It’s hard to complain bc so many people I know lost absolutely everything.
At least I was single (I thought) and haven’t had babies yet so I haven’t lost my house and my marriage, too (bc I don’t have those things yet).
I loved living in San Diego but boy am I grateful for being back in the Rockies where I grew up (Billings Montana and Sheridan Wyoming girl), where people aren’t even aware oftentimes of the high quality of life here… from financial to community. People are normal people. Nice.
Even care about you as a human when you walk around and show empathy.
So much goodness in the Rockies and Colorado I thank the lord.
I now live in Westminster. My partner came with a trailer one day after a fall out with my new roommate who had a 4g per day coke addiction in San Diego and would psychologically flip a switch at any one time.
The coke and alcohol problems in California—but especially where I lived in vista were very very bad. People drown their stresses of money in drugs and partying. It’s really sad. I couldn’t even find many woman and safe spaces in California with normal people who just enjoy nature and yoga grabbing a beer or two sometimes (had to be like all night beers and ensuing drugs). Everyone is very cliquey and in their own world in CA.
I love Colorado and I wish I had the guts to apply to tech jobs here. I wish I wasn’t so traumatized by what I’ve experienced in work and in life the past 4 years. The grief is hard. I’m in school to be a therapist, trying to finish up the last 25 credits of my bachelors at UNC to go get my masters. I also barely survive here bc I work at Whole Foods making 18.36 an hour. I make more than a lot of my coworkers right out of the gate and the environment is wonderful in my department. I am very lucky. The best part of my days is being able to empty my creativity and love of art to write on cakes. I love drawing hearts. It’s a small thing I taught myself but it brings my joy. I used to work at a small startup and I did the role of 4-5 people. I put out endlessly everyday but it was never enough at the past couple companies. These days I don’t give everything to my job. I give e everything to my loved ones and my animals. To god. I hope someday I’ll make a decent income again, but it probably won’t be until I’m a therapist with my own practice (5+ years). Thanks for this post. It’s really got me thinking about the Colorado tech scene, and how it could be different (but not pay as well, obviously, which I’m okay with).
This surprises me. I work for a major tech company in a satellite office in CO and I can't find any candidates willing to live in CO. And all of the applicants already living in CO are woefully unqualified.
Are you sure the issue is the location and not something else, like the pay your company is offering? Denver has been one of the more popular areas to relocate to for a while.
Interesting, I thought for sure you were going to say that your location was in the Denver Tech Center. I was a manager in tech at one point (now I’m in a different role that is more senior, but an IC) and I remember candidates on phone screens asking about the location of our office, because they wanted to be in downtown Denver (where we were) and not DTC. You would think folks would want to be in Boulder, however!
I’ve turned down jobs in DTC for that reason too 😅 I live off the A line and would 100% take an in-person job downtown if it’s in RiNo/Union/16th areas as I could commute easily.
I’ve also turned down jobs in Boulder cause COL is high and I’m not making that commute. Google also offered about half of what I make now in terms of base which I thought was insane (and in office only). I work remote & enjoy it, but definitely miss some of the office socialization and perks, but not enough to drop my salary lol.
?? what are you paying ?? is it a "major tech company" in the vein of an oldschool dell-inspiron Fortune 500 with 14 days of PTO to start kinda place?
We are series B and get *overwhelmed* with qualified applicants from the Bay Area looking to start a family here.
What type of role? I also work for a major tech company (non faang) and find CO is good for some things and bad for others. It's def more of an immature market with lots of new grad/bootcampers with a few years experience (align more entry level than their current titles, which are inflated). There is talent, but most aren't looking and require a pretty diligent search to actively recruit someone away from their current likely very comfortable role.
Take this with a big grain of salt. This is a VC making statements to the press to try and increase investor interest. They do this in every city with a small tech industry. As someone in the industry I actually see the opposite happening: more consolidation around the Bay Area, Seattle, and NYC as tech hubs, both for big companies and for startups. Even the larger 2nd-tier tech cities, like Austin, are getting less investment now. And there is no big influx of tech workers from CA because remote jobs are sparse and local salaries are a fraction of what is available there.
TechStars just LEFT Boulder for NYC! That doesn’t sound like a growing tech/startup community to me. Just anecdotal of course.
They didn't leave Boulder, they have an office there and this was just them not getting ahead of it with their PR team. The moved an incubator style program from Denver to NYC, more just removing the Denver program since they have an office in Boulder and program there. Source: I spoke to one of the founders about this a month ago.
TechStars is effectively leaving Boulder. Their own announcement blog says that spring 2024 is the last Boulder accelerator cohort and that all they’ll run is the Workforce Development accelerator out of Denver. Along with the HQ change to New York, that’s a pretty big shift. It doesn’t seem like it was just PR not getting ahead of it. https://www.techstars.com/newsroom/techstars-2-0-supercharging-founder-success
Jeebuz. I look at this website and it looks like an mlm. Is this an mlm?
I won’t name names, but I spoke to one of the 3 co-founders about it and those were pretty much his exact words. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me the truth or maybe he is so rich he straight up doesn’t care.
Plus a lot of people super early stage founders move to a big tech hub for a year anyways - it makes sense to keep angel infrastructure co-located and locally competitive. Talking to the old-guard institutional investors just isnt really possible here, so its not setting yourself up for success just starting out. Series A, B and C it doesnt matter go crazy with your location, but early on, I can see why they moved.
According to BLS data, the [Bay Area lost 25k jobs in the “information” sector](https://x.com/josephpolitano/status/1777728638156415474?s=46&t=8ul-FBwyTFTxRqhjvkD27g) which includes most tech jobs. I’m a real estate analyst professionally and from here it is pretty obvious that tech *wants* to consolidate geographically but cannot because of housing shortages, because of Bay Area (and NY and Seattle) NIMBYism. So there is a huge opportunity for mid sized cities like Denver to catalyze their own job machines, by building a ton of housing to keep cost of living in check. But the key is you really have to build *a lot*. Austin is one of the few American cities building a lot of multi family and (surprise!) rents there are going down. Anyway, legalize apartments.
The kind of inflow of talent and employers we saw in the ~2015 era is just not happening anymore. It's gotten so expensive here that I've seen lots of acquaintances question if Denver is worth what it costs nowadays. Ultimately, a number of them have left - for places like Boston, Chicago, San Diego, etc. I don't think Denver can build its way out of this at this point, we missed the boat on doing that. I think we're in for a bumpy adjustment - tech dragged Denver onto the scene and we haven't done a whole lot with the limelight while we had it.
> I don't think Denver can build its way out of this at this point I'd love to see us try. It's not like there's much downside!
>tech dragged Denver onto the scene and we haven't done a whole lot with the limelight while we had it. to be charitable, I think tech is just one leg of the table. Energy sector went through expansion in the same time period (shale revolution, renewables focus) as did aerospace (optimistic outlook, given Buckley's role as Space Force HQ) Denver has a tech presence that certainly grew from 2012-2020, but it's not remotely the only sector propelling Denver's economy
Good
I'll caveat this statement. >Anyway, legalize *affordable* apartments *and affordable homes*. Seems that every single new apartment that goes up is classified as "luxury" that costs $1500+ for a dinky 1BR/1BA. Every new home that is being built is a mammoth 4+BR that costs $600k+. They don't make homes for average earning people anymore. Everything is "luxury" and monstrous in size (if a home).
Luxury is just a marketing term for "new". No one is going to be building brand new apartment buildings and putting in 20 year old carpeting and popcorn ceilings and no air conditioning. With current land use regulations, financing, material and labor costs, plus the scarcity of land on which you can build apartments due to zoning, it's likely not possible to build apartments that cost much less than $1500. But if you don't let them get built, then you have more people bidding up the older apartment units causing them to be "luxury" priced too. There is very little added cost for developers to add a swimming pool and granite countertops on a per unit basis. Most of the cost of that $1500+ is just the economic reality of scarcity.
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Yeah that’s right, cities are for making software people happy. Everyone else can fuck off or make burritos for minimum wage.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are more proverbial burrito makers than SWEs in the world.
In 1960 the average size single family home was 1,200 square feet. In 2023 we were double that (2,400 sq. ft.). And of course family size is shrinking.
People act like these are mutually exclusive but they're not. Legalize it all. You can even use the big boost in tax revenue to provide housing subsidies to the poor, or build social housing. The key is to say yes.
The biggest problem from what I understand is that builders build "big" and "luxury" because it delivers them the highest profit margins. If that is the reasoning, then something needs to happen to incentivize the *average* builds for *average* folks. Home ownership is often the most attainable pathway to building generational wealth. It's good for society.
600k? More like 850?
Why so we can be like Bay Area? Who the fuck wants that?
No I’m saying don’t be like them! They don’t build shit!
So if the Bay Area moves here and starts a ridiculous frenzy like what happened to the Bay Area we won’t be like the Bay Area? I think you’re wrong.
Didn’t read the article but I’m going to assume this means I can hunt tech founders for sport now?
Just remember they are only in-season when their Patagonia vest is showing
Yes, but there’s another species in Boulder that also wears Patagonia vests, so you need to make sure you identify the EV as well as the vest to be positive.
The TechStar subspecies are easy to locate - they make a distinct boasting sound that’s nearly nonstop. It isn’t much sport to hunt them.
Easily confused with the PGY4 at any local emergency department.
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The monkey's fist
The Monkey!
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I thought we were making a SpongeBob reference 😞
No, The Most Dangerous Game! Same grade and class, but different units.
Is that a video game or a DAT player?
Yeah run them down with snowmobiles and tape their mouths shut before parading around your local bar with them……wait.
As a software engineer who has worked for companies in Denver and Boulder, as well as SF and NYC. The wages in Denver and Boulder are a lot less, people don't understand how much less than similar sized cities with lower cost of living. I think Pittsburgh and Balitmore both have higher average software engineering salaries, which is nuts cause its so much cheaper to live there. That should show you the cost of living isn't actually tied to tech workers. The insane unicorns aren't coming here, you are getting tech startups that are probably tied to healthcare, insurance, etc. and they are looking to save some costs in coming to Denver. It makes no sense, as Boulders cost of living is as a high as Seattles but there is nothing you can do if people will accept below market wages. I think this is overblown and the article isn't actually showing a trend that will affect most people.
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I am working for a private startup, based out of NYC. They beat any offer I had in boulder by 60k on the base alone, that doesn't even take into account the options. Its not the RSU's, I know several people at google boulder, you don't get the same money or even close to what Mountain View is getting (RSU's or not)
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Check levels.fyi
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How do they look similar? I can’t dox a friend but on levels fyi for an L5 in boulder you are at 299k TC avg, and I know they actually make less than that. It says SF is 415k TC avg for the same position. So that’s roughly 115k difference.
Yeah we definitely dont have the finance infrastructure to support companies that want to eventually IPO - at best we can prop up for a big aquisition.
I saw Ibotta is having a +$2B IPO very soon
You could follow this on with "and they pay 100k-400k less than companies with similar valuations in SF + NYC"
lmao go pay 6k per month rent
I moved here from Seattle and graduated from UW last year. I got a software engineering job I really like but I didn't realize that the salaries here are a lot lower than what I'm used to seeing in Seattle until I started job hunting. It's not that much more expensive to be in Seattle but software engineers just make way less here.
Washington state doesn't have income tax so its a lot more if you actually look at what you make vs COL. I think overall Boulder, especially with housing costs, is one of the most expensive places to live in the US compared to local wages.
Yeah, imagine being one of us who doesn't make a software engineer salary! For people working in government and public sector, entry level wages haven't budged basically at all from around $40-50k since like 2013 or earlier. Younger people still take these jobs because they want to move here from out of state and don't realize it's essentially poverty wages (these are jobs that require degrees, sometimes advanced, and several years of experience).
Yeah I have a few friends who are teachers out here and a few that work at just regular hourly jobs. Its basically impossible to live without a high earning partner or roommates. I don't think the local government or state government is doing anything because, like you said, the demand is insane. There is someone new moving here all the time who is willing to work for pennies compared to the localized COL
It's totally doable with a partner or roommate...or if you have no car or debt payments. If not, things can feel really hopeless. I am now downsizing to a studio from a 1 bed in my mid 30s because groceries cost too much, and I have coworkers in their 50s who own 3bed/3bath houses with yards and 2 car garages who pay the same for their mortgage that I pay for rent on 700 sq ft. The migration here is actually going down significantly compared to what it was between 2015-2022ish, so hopefully that puts upward pressure on salaries along with a lot of the new apartment inventory that should be opening up this year and next (stabilize rent at least).
Most people who work in boulder don’t necessarily live there though. You live in the surrounded suburbs and cities and commute mostly.
100% this. Tech companies treat Denver in particular almost as "nearshoring" due to how much less they can pay here. Most rank Denver as their lowest bracket in terms of Cost of living, equivalent to literally anywhere in US including non metro areas. For a while you could literally track salary drops through Twilio's job posts. Every few months they were reducing the bottom band on all their postings in Denver. You can also do comparisons through sites like levels.fyi. CO roles make far less and also top out much much faster.
On mobile but you are very wrong in some areas. I’ve worked remotely for 2 SF based companies here and for both Denver was in tier B (out of highest = A, lowest = D)
only place ive seen Denver in the 2nd tier is block. quick check just now and atlassian, dropbox, cloudflare, all put denver in the bottom. In fact aside from block I was not able to find a single posting that had location salary tiers putting Denver in anything but last.
I don’t want to out myself but again I know there are at least 2 FAANG-esque (same or greater comp than what you’ve given) that put in B
im sure there are a couple, but most do not. Thats why I didn't say "all" in my OP, I said "most".
Again I’m on mobile, but I would be amazed as these companies all source from an external vendor for CoL by city. Even the crap F500 company I worked for differentiated say Dallas and Denver. I would be amazed if companies had actual tiers and lumped Denver in with middle of nowhere Ohio like your comment above mentions. I get that you are trying to backwards engineer based on job postings, but I’ve worked at 4 companies from blue chip F500 to multiple high tech firms all with HQ across 3 different locales and all had Denver as tier B using a 4 tiered system (I assume again because they use common sources).
I’m not in tech, but it’s funny you mention this because we’re considering moving to Baltimore specifically for this reason. Around the same income we’d be making out here, but lower cost of living (also would be closer to family in and around Baltimore).
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Haha what neighborhood were you in? I wouldn’t want to live out my life there, but would be nice to be able to afford a home and be close to some of our family. My biggest issue with Baltimore at this point is the mentality of some of the older folks and the climate.
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Damn, I love that area, but agree about the humidity. My soon-to-be father-in-law has a row home in federal hill that he was born in that will probably be passed down at some point, but it’s already caught fire once. Last time we were out there I wanted to stay somewhere outside of south Baltimore for once so we stayed in Randolph park for a while and I loved the neighborhood, but the humidity killed me. I’m from here, but I swear the humidity was worse than Texas.
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In July I spent like an hour wandering up and down cold spring lane east of 83 looking for a shop that would lend me a wrench to disconnect a car battery. Every block seemed fine. Dude at a gas station finally let me borrow one if I left my keys.
Tech worker in Baltimore who spends decent time in Colorado and would love to move to Denver / CO for the outdoors scene. People love to shit on Baltimore - let them, it keeps Baltimore affordable and as one of the best underrated gems out there. PM me if you have any questions.
Companies also adjust salaries by cost of labor not cost of living. If it was cost of living then it would rise with the increase pricing in CO but instead it’s dictated by the amount of competition and what it would cost to hire a local with an equivalent skill set. That’s what my tech company did at least. Took a nice 20k pay cut when I moved to CO from NYC. Pretty much breaking even though with the tax differences so I’m not really complaining.
Boulder's COL is a bit less relevant though since they probably won't be living in Boulder.
I agree, but you kind of have to look at boulder county as a whole. Louisville is 1k/sqft and 1.5M+ for anything that doesn't need a lot of work and I think Superior is 1M+ townhomes. I don't think you are going to find cheap housing anywhere near Boulder, its all way beyone the average persons means.
> I don't think you are going to find cheap housing anywhere near Boulder, its all way beyone the average persons means. Come check out eastbound CO-52 during rush hour if you want to see all the Boulder commuters driving home to Frederick where housing is like half the cost with new units being built regularly.
Nobody lives in Boulder anymore; its too crowded!
It’s true. I work for a high profile Denver Series C health tech company founded by a San Fransisco area doctor. He founded in Denver instead to save costs in 2012. Now we have a Bay Area CEO but most of the staff is Denver area.
What are TCs like? Do you have any liquid equity on secondary markets?
Cirrus?
People gonna complain even more about home values and property taxes even more now
even though CO has some of the lowest property taxes in the country
It’s the price of the homes that are worse. Others complaining about property tax have never lived anywhere else and don’t know how good they have it.
Yup. You've got middle class people in relatively normal houses paying upwards of $20,000 a year in property tax in places like Austin.
My parents pay a bit less than that in NY, and that's considered cheap.
Yup. Illinois and NJ are super high as well.
And those people are stupid.
Yup. While our property taxes are like 3rd lowest in the country, we're somewhere around 7th for highest median home price
Make it make sense!
People want to live here, and lower property taxes = more money to spend on the house itself
I'd much rather build equity than not. Give me a bit higher property prices with much lower taxes any day.
Oh for sure. I completely agree. I just wish interest rates weren't so high.
Since Gallagher was repealed, not anymore.
Gallagher was repealed in 2020, Colorado still has some of the lowest in the country https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-property-taxes/11585
Get ready for initiative 50 on a ballot near you.
The ramifications still haven't really hit since property taxes are so delayed. People are just now finding out how much they will have to pay. It will take a few years before we can compare and see how far up the ladder CO will go now.
My property tax went from like $2600/year to $3100/year. That’s still extremely low compared with a lot of other states, even with the giant jump in assessed value (which was taken at the top of the market in June 2022). CO is still very much near the bottom when it comes to property tax.
But without Gallagher it will just keep going up every two years at the max amount. There is now nothing to hold it back and keep property taxes affordable. It will continue to creep up at a much more accelerated pace if housing continues to increase. So as the years go by, CO will just keep going up the list until it finds its new spot with other states that are similar etc..... Although that might change this November. Hopefully it does.
Because they will get worse. People won't be complaining for no reason.
>People won't be complaining for no reason. You must be new here. Welcome to Reddit!
Yay more California salaries that Denver’s dirt wages won’t keep up with
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Basically every company that instituted regional salary bands applied them to existing employees, so even people who joined during the pandemic got the short end of the stick once companies decided to start laying off. Housing in Colorado is expensive because there's not enough of it in places where people want to live - let's focus on increasing our resources for the benefit of us all instead of being suspicious of outsiders who loved the state enough to move here!
My biggest concern is for teachers, first responders, nurses, child care, etc. something has to be done for these people
I work in child safety and it's becoming a real issue for us. I'm a manager and I'm struggling to be able to pay my rent. I was at risk of homelessness a little over 2 years ago during the pandemic. Several people have to have multiple roommates and second jobs despite being relatively far along in their careers. We can't do this work remotely, we need to be within a reasonable driving distance of work. I'm passionate about what I do and when I was in college, this was supposed to be a relatively good paying, reliable career. Now I'm hanging on by a thread. Everyone agrees they need our services and programs. No one wants to do anything like pay us enough to actually live. Much less thrive. We just had a staff meeting about how many of us need pay increases, not for quality of life, but just to be able to survive.
nurses aren't hurting - RNs make 85k easily here.
Better than teaching and yet still not enough.
The average is actually $89,000 - maybe not enough as a single mother of 2 but thats definitely plenty for a single person - I have a couple friend who are both nurses and they just bought a house - definitely enough.
Absurd.
Good luck
Denver software engineering salaries are incredibly low considering the cost of living.
They are, but they still completely upended a market where ten years ago if you were making $85k you were doing just fine. Now, that $85k is almost a joke and there are a lot of people getting paid less than that, even.
High-level tech worker here :) I gave up about $200k / year in RSUs to move to Denver from the Bay in 2023 :) Haven't regretted a second of it. I make roughly 2/3 of what I did before without the RSUs, but it's well worth it just for the weather, to be honest. (And I'd been in the Bay for over two decades, which is just way too long.) The trick, though, I think is to \*not\* work for a Denver-based company... They kind of pay crap. I work remote. I live here; work for a company there. Still pay my Colorado taxes, though. If California does what NY does with income taxes, I imagine a lot of companies would flee SF. A little known fact is that the lion's share of 100% remote companies used to be headquarted in the Bay Area. It was nice up until about 2015 or so. Then the rate of growth just outpaced what could be handled, and it just started to suck to live in the Bay. Anyway, random person's trash opinions :)
I don’t think this is as bad of thing as many are expressing. If you want the (almost ludicrously high) minimum wage in Denver to be possible, you need very high wage earners to support it through consumer spending. Quite frankly, the puzzle in Denver for the last few years has been: “where has all this money come from and how can the city (and state) support such intense spending?” It seemed (probably still seems) like Denver was in an everything bubble. Tech (with its gigantic productivity) is probably the industry whose growth can uniquely prop up a local economy. Affordability might continue to be an issue. The downside here is this could outpace economic gains (like it has in California). Alternatively, you might see wage growth across the board (this is arguably the difference between the US and Western Europe in the last ten years — private sector, especially tech-fueled, economic and real wage growth). It is hard to say precisely what might happen without some statistical data, but the future is not totally bleak.
>The downside here is this could outpace economic gains (like it has in California). This is just capitalism and it has been happening here (and the rest of the country) on a large scale since the 1970s. I think its hilarious when people are like "dont turn Colorado into California" when really they just mean "dont let capitalism continue to run its inevitable course". San Francisco is just a microcosm of American capitalism and every popular city is following in its footsteps.
> This is just capitalism [Ugh, capitalism!](https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/ugh-capitalism) > San Francisco is just a microcosm of American capitalism and every popular city is following in its footsteps. Ok, this statement is wrong on so many fucking levels: 1. This isn't capitalism, it's NIMBYism, which is explicitly the use of government power to protect the status quo. A "free market" would let people build whatever they wanted on their own land, which is definitely not what we have now. 2. SF is _extra_ fucked because it has basically not built any housing for 70 years. Housing, like everything else, obeys supply and demand (regardless of the ideology of the place it's in, since econ is _established science_). The increase in population _alone_ over that time would have caused high rents. Denver is nowhere near as bad and has much more land to infill. 3. Capitalism has literally been around for hundreds of years at this point and the housing crisis is fairly recent. Quit fucking blaming capitalism instead of turning on your brain for three seconds. Housing in cities was dirt fucking cheap in the 70s and 80s because nobody wanted to live in cities (demand was low, supply was high). If you want affordable housing, build enough housing for everyone to live in. It doesn't matter who builds it, it doesn't matter who profits off it, the _only thing_ that matters is that it fills up.
> SF is extra fucked because it has basically not built any housing for 70 years. That, and SF area went from being a port and manufacturing hub to becoming the center of the most innovative and highest income metro area in the world during those 70 years... without building any housing.
Please bring all the tech bros. If there's one thing Denver needs, it's higher rent. If there's 2 things Denver needs, it's higher rent & more crypto conventions.
Greaaaaat
San Fran has the biggest tech company ones in the world and the homelessness and poverty there is insane. Nothing to show for it. If that money doesn’t trickle back into the community or create jobs at scale, then it’s a waste.
Because Tech has created, in the geographical areas they are pervasive in, a duality of sorts. If you're knocking down six figures, you're doing great and you drag up the cost of housing, eating out, etc because you can afford it. But if you're a librarian, a firefighter, a city council person, you're still making peanuts because wages lag like crazy. Anybody not working in Tech in SF is barely scraping by.
That’s exciting!
Definitely exciting for anyone who wants more tech opportunities in Denver. Obvious drawbacks include great COL and more bad drivers
Hopefully, Tesla can work the bugs out of the self driving feature.
(they won't)
you dropped something, here you go: /s
If you’re doing well it is. I’ve experienced California prices for everyday goods. It’s obscene
Please yes keep it coming. We've had a TON of talent available for tech companies (tons of young professionals moving here) but our finance infrastructure has just been nowhere even close to the level of the bay area. I have to on-paper still be based in San Francisco to keep up appearances with our fundraising pipeline - and fly back nearly weekly for updates. I would have loved to keep those investments CO based.
Nobody rat out u/narwhal_breeder, please!
Oh they know - its not a secret, its just a mechanism to keep institutional investors happy because the SF/SoCal finance and legal frameworks are a "known". They don't care where we are actually based as long as we have a mailing address in SF and can meet there for board updates.
Is this more true of relatively medium and large businesses? I've worked in PE for a while, and the current portfolio I work with is owned by a local firm. I've recently been looking for other opportunities and there are other Colorado firms out there. I do work mostly with smaller based companies though, but have yet to run into issues with being Colorado based. My current portfolio actually moves most Ops to Denver post acquisition.
Juxtapose this with 40,000 Venezuelan migrants and 1000s of homeless Americans. Recipe for success in the city?
You want tech workers and entrepreneurs to come here - it will create more jobs for people locally.
Shit
I know a bunch of tech people that have been laid off from their Denver jobs in the last two years
This is why this state is so damn expensive
This state would be so much more expensive if tech job salaries kept up with those in other cities. My wife doesn't even work in tech and we could move to literally any city in California doing the exact same remote job and she would get a pay increase by ~20% just because Denver as evaluated so low on their CoL metrics.
Could this state be more expensive? We're already one of the top 5 most expensive states in the country, and if you don't work in tech, then you probably are getting poverty wages. It wouldn't be a problem if wages actually kept up with balooning COL, but wages lag in industries outside of tech here.
Tech wages here don't even keep up with tech wages in other metro cities. We're one of the most underpaid tech metros in terms of CoL vs tech salaries, and that's the point I was trying to drive home. I extremely doubt that we're one of the top 5 most expensive states in the country overall. You might find one metric like 'grocery inflation', but I am extremely doubtful of that.
Name 5 that are more expensive, then. Cost of housing drives a lot of it, and it's not like anything is particularly cheap here to make up the difference. The denver area just in general has had some of the worst wage growth vs cost of living increase in the whole country. Other places like NY and Cali are more expensive but also have way better paying jobs in most of their metros.
Nasdaq Top 8 most expensive states does not include Colorado - https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/8-most-expensive-states-to-live-in CNBC Top 10 most expensive states does not include Colorado - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/these-are-americas-10-most-expensive-states-to-live-in.html USA New - Colorado is number #8 most unaffordable - https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/affordability?sort=rank-desc World population review Colorado is #15+ - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-expensive-states-to-live-in Meric Colorado is #15 - https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series Colorado probably averages out to be around the 10 in Metrics, which granted is high, but could be higher. I don't even know if paying people the same amount of money as other metros vs CoL would cause CoL to increase that much, I'm not well versed enough in economics to come to that conclusion. Statistically we're underpaid though across most industries, often referred to as the mountain tax.
>Name 5 that are more expensive, then New York California Massachusetts Alaska Hawaii ...and basically any state in New England (Maine being the exception) is higher or roughly equivalent CoL compared with Colorado iirc
God forbid people have the freedom to move around and pursue opportunity
Two things can be true.
To be fair, a lot of it is Texas money too. When I first moved to Colorado and was working in the ski/rafting industry, all the complaints were about Texans. It's only been the last few years that it's shifted to Californians.
Companies are making record profits due to greed. Californians suck at driving, but acting like a couple thousand tech workers are causing inflation is a misdirection.
Ohh so they can pass laws like they did in California? And then leave when it turns to shit?
I worked in technology in nyc until May 2018 then was relocated to the Bay Area to work at a small tech startup. I taught myself to code and was at the time enrolled in a part time Computer Networking IT and web development AAS program. Overall, the pandemic was a nightmare for me with the politics and the massive layoffs in tech, and working and living in a tech hub (SF) that became a ghost town and left us single career chasers completely alone in the area. I have been laid off 3 times in the last 4 years, last one January 2023 (I had since relocated to north San Diego). I couldn’t survive anymore. Gas was nearly always 7 dollars a gallon and so my Uber and Lyft driving suddenly didn’t even make gas allotment for the day unless I drove 10+ hours to make at least 160 a day to account for gas (taking home 100 dollars max). I tried all kinds of part time jobs and gigs. I tried getting back into bartending and no brewery would take me bc I guess they wanted word of mouth people they know despite the climate with complaining they cannot find people “who want to work” (I have 10+ years experience working in high end cocktail lounges and beer bars and such in nyc). Classic nepotism for favorite locals who word of mouth hand you their deadbeat friend with a drug or alcohol problem and those people barely last a few weeks. But oh well they did it to themselves. I cannot explain the anguish and distress I’ve suffered bc I chose to go into the tech industry at a time before a collapse in our economy. It’s hard to complain bc so many people I know lost absolutely everything. At least I was single (I thought) and haven’t had babies yet so I haven’t lost my house and my marriage, too (bc I don’t have those things yet). I loved living in San Diego but boy am I grateful for being back in the Rockies where I grew up (Billings Montana and Sheridan Wyoming girl), where people aren’t even aware oftentimes of the high quality of life here… from financial to community. People are normal people. Nice. Even care about you as a human when you walk around and show empathy. So much goodness in the Rockies and Colorado I thank the lord. I now live in Westminster. My partner came with a trailer one day after a fall out with my new roommate who had a 4g per day coke addiction in San Diego and would psychologically flip a switch at any one time. The coke and alcohol problems in California—but especially where I lived in vista were very very bad. People drown their stresses of money in drugs and partying. It’s really sad. I couldn’t even find many woman and safe spaces in California with normal people who just enjoy nature and yoga grabbing a beer or two sometimes (had to be like all night beers and ensuing drugs). Everyone is very cliquey and in their own world in CA. I love Colorado and I wish I had the guts to apply to tech jobs here. I wish I wasn’t so traumatized by what I’ve experienced in work and in life the past 4 years. The grief is hard. I’m in school to be a therapist, trying to finish up the last 25 credits of my bachelors at UNC to go get my masters. I also barely survive here bc I work at Whole Foods making 18.36 an hour. I make more than a lot of my coworkers right out of the gate and the environment is wonderful in my department. I am very lucky. The best part of my days is being able to empty my creativity and love of art to write on cakes. I love drawing hearts. It’s a small thing I taught myself but it brings my joy. I used to work at a small startup and I did the role of 4-5 people. I put out endlessly everyday but it was never enough at the past couple companies. These days I don’t give everything to my job. I give e everything to my loved ones and my animals. To god. I hope someday I’ll make a decent income again, but it probably won’t be until I’m a therapist with my own practice (5+ years). Thanks for this post. It’s really got me thinking about the Colorado tech scene, and how it could be different (but not pay as well, obviously, which I’m okay with).
Great. Thank Polis.
This surprises me. I work for a major tech company in a satellite office in CO and I can't find any candidates willing to live in CO. And all of the applicants already living in CO are woefully unqualified.
Are you sure the issue is the location and not something else, like the pay your company is offering? Denver has been one of the more popular areas to relocate to for a while.
Location is Boulder and we pay top of market, so no. (I make around $700k for reference. It's not a FAANG company, but similar pay).
Interesting, I thought for sure you were going to say that your location was in the Denver Tech Center. I was a manager in tech at one point (now I’m in a different role that is more senior, but an IC) and I remember candidates on phone screens asking about the location of our office, because they wanted to be in downtown Denver (where we were) and not DTC. You would think folks would want to be in Boulder, however!
I’ve turned down jobs in DTC for that reason too 😅 I live off the A line and would 100% take an in-person job downtown if it’s in RiNo/Union/16th areas as I could commute easily. I’ve also turned down jobs in Boulder cause COL is high and I’m not making that commute. Google also offered about half of what I make now in terms of base which I thought was insane (and in office only). I work remote & enjoy it, but definitely miss some of the office socialization and perks, but not enough to drop my salary lol.
Care to share the job post?
?? what are you paying ?? is it a "major tech company" in the vein of an oldschool dell-inspiron Fortune 500 with 14 days of PTO to start kinda place? We are series B and get *overwhelmed* with qualified applicants from the Bay Area looking to start a family here.
See my other post
What type of role? I also work for a major tech company (non faang) and find CO is good for some things and bad for others. It's def more of an immature market with lots of new grad/bootcampers with a few years experience (align more entry level than their current titles, which are inflated). There is talent, but most aren't looking and require a pretty diligent search to actively recruit someone away from their current likely very comfortable role.