I first met RJ Nagle back when he was writing docs for Dell. I became aware of RJ’s writing when he started posting to GeekAustin. Some of you might recognize Rob from his book reviews for Slashdot.
A while back, Rob moved from Austin to Houston, in search of stable employment. Rather than simply grumble about Houston, he started organizing events and making things happen. He now helps run the Houston Fray Cafe.
About six months ago I asked Rob to write an article about the differences in Houston and Austin geek culture. Six months and a few thousand words later, he finished. The result is So Long and Thanks for all the Foobars . Rob comments that the essay “describes my life as an unemployed geek in Austin between 2001 and 2002. Now that I am ex-Austinite living in Houston, I wonder why I stayed in Austin for as long as I did.”
The article ended up being much too long for GeekAustin. So you can read the article on Rob’s own site. Check out his other writing while your at it.
October 28th, 2003 at 6:24 pm
Life’s hard all around. Rob might have had more luck staying in Austin if he’d dropped the irritating sense of entitlement.
I stayed in Austin through the same tough times as he did, and I did it by taking whatever jobs were available. I managed to find computer work here and there, but what’s wrong with $8.50 or $9 an hour? What’s wrong with McDonald’s, for that matter, if it comes down to it? You absolutely can live in Austin on that kind of money. Many of my friends in Austin work cash registers and service jobs. They’re not rich, but they’re also not struggling to survive, or suffering through 45 minute commutes. (I’ve done my share of 45 minute commutes, though, and they weren’t so insufferable as to drive me out of town.) If having the high-paying tech job you want is more important to you than living where you like, then obviously you’ll end up following the jobs. Why should I care if you’re conflicted about your priorities?
I moved out to Berkeley, CA a few months ago. The tech job market out here is probably worse than it was in Austin, and the cost of living is higher. But I like it here, so I’m staying.
October 29th, 2003 at 1:12 pm
I didn’t find any “sense of entitlement” in his article. He grimly accepted that he wouldn’t be able to get good work in Austin and moved to Houston. Sheesh. There obviously isn’t anything “wrong” with low-paying jobs, other than that they’re low-paying jobs. You can’t seriously oppose the author’s desire to do a job that he is trained for, good at, and finds somewhat enjoyable, can you?
October 29th, 2003 at 4:35 pm
I agree.
To me, Nagle’s most important point was that a lot of the hype about Austin isn’t born out by the opportunities. Houston is a place you find yourself pleasantly surprised by, because you expect worse than you get, and the economic opportunities there out strip those here.
One very important area that Houston just beats the heck out of Austin, is rent. By this I mean commercial and residential. In Houston a decent appartment, in a relatively safe and crime-free area, big enough to use as a home office, can be had for $450/mo. If you want a cheap office in an industrial park, you are looking at a similar price. When I looked for office space here in Austin, it only made economic sense if I lived were I worked — got an apartment big enough to be my business, or moved into the back room of an industrial park place.
Now that cheap apartment in Houston may well be an hour’s drive from places you regularly need to go. But I think Houston is benefiting from the unfettered expansion, and the high prices in Austin are part of a deliberate restrictive plot by developers and big land owners, to drive up rents.
My strategy (given that I save up another $40k or so) is to buy a house on the east side of I-35 around 10th street, several blocks away from the interstate, at a foreclosure auction. The area has a bad reputation around here but it isn’t the ghetto it’s portrayed as, I’ve seen ghettos. That is, if I don’t end up moving to Houston myself.
October 29th, 2003 at 5:59 pm
you asked him to compare geek cultures, and you get 4 pages on his very non-unique experiences and then a paragraph on the differences between Houston and Austin?
Very disappointing.
October 30th, 2003 at 1:51 am
Something a lot of people don’t seem to consider is how much cheaper Austin suburbs are than downtown Austin. Or for that matter, how much cheaper north Austin is than central and south Austin. I’ve actually heard a lot of south and central Austinites spout the same kind of disdain for anything north of downtown or east of I35 that they usually would reserve for Houston or Dallas. I personally live in Pflugerville and like it. I’ve had some south Austinites say things like “oh, Pflugerville, that is like way out in the middle of nowhere” like it was Killeen or Temple or something. And the crazy thing is these were usually people who live south of Ben White, meaning they are as far or farther from downtown than I am and I can actually get to 6th street FASTER than they can most of the time, especially in the evenings when you’d want to go down there for music or bar hopping or whatever. Sure, I have a 1/2 hour commute (I work in northwest Austin), but I’d have about that if I lived downtown, and my commute would be much worse if I lived south. And Pflugerville is for the most part nice and quiet with reasonable access to any shopping I need (H-E-B, Fry’s and the big box shops are all 5 to 15 minutes away). I have plenty of space (2300+ sq feet), two car garage, a nice little yard and I don’t share walls with anyone, all for only a little more than what I’d probably be paying in rent for a much smaller apartment downtown. I don’t know how rents compare because I’ve not been in that market, but I would suspect that they are cheaper outside the Austin city limits as well, especially right now given the huge quantities of ‘for rent’ signs I see around. From what I’ve seen towns a little further out yet like Hutto, Taylor, Manor, etc. are even cheaper for houses. While it would suck to commute during rush hour from a lot of them to down town, they still aren’t so far that a person couldn’t enjoy the things about Austin people like evenings and weekends.
October 31st, 2003 at 4:11 pm
Part of the problem with Austin currently is that the combination of increasing living costs and disappearing “survival jobs” are chewing away the ability to maintain any type of reserve. If people such a Nagle (and myself, although I have managed to stay so far) can’t pull through the low spots during slow times, then we leave, and you have put yourself into a boom and bust cycle similar to Houston’s (ironically enough).
If you own huge blocks of apartments and larger businesses, this is ok, you can probably afford to keep your rents high and let half the place be empty. If you rent one house, you probably have to drop rent and fill it. Similarly all the smaller businesses such as sandwich shops and small coffee houses are more likely to go under in a the bust than the big chains.
The large number of students at UT will keep rent and living costs high around there.
The rest of this area would be much cheaper, and ultimately nicer to live in if there were more open Houston style development. I know this is not what many Austinites believe. I think that many of the restrictions on development, especially to the west of Austin, merely serve to keep prices high for large landowners and developers.
As far as living arangements go, I think the best thing to do is to share a rented house with 2 other people (provides more stability in case one leaves) south of Oltorf or East of 35.
With rent and utilities then down to 300 to 450 a person, you can get by better on intermitent work while you hack on that great piece of software or build your band or attend night school at ACC or whatever. However, the bad part of this is that sometimes you have to live with freaks, preverts, theives, potheads, or just plain slobs. I have no problem with any except for the theives so this mostly works out for me, so long as the slob’s room is venelated to the outside so I don’t have to smell rotting food.
As far the jobs go, its tough. Those temp agencies are rip offs as Nagle observed. Many of things they do are illegal, especially the games they play with unemployment benefits. Many will demand that you not apply at several agencies at once, that you exclusive to them, but they don’t pay you a stipend to keep you exclusive. If they even paid $10 a day for each day you didn’t work that would be different, as it is, you have to lie to them and apply at many places. Don’t feel bad, they are all viscious lying bastards; when you report there after stoping work somewhere, bring a witness, and if don’t believe they are bastards, tell them you are bringing a witness that you are reporting, and watch the look on their face. They know exactly what they are doing.
The key is to constantly be building up a variety of side sources of income, even though they are far more trouble than they are worth while you are working. This can include consulting, selling things on ebay, doing handyman work for your landlord’s other houses, whatever. The goal is to have $200 a month coming in from moonlighting, and know that if push comes to shove you can increase that to $600 a month in 2 or three months. It’s very hard to do, however.
November 3rd, 2003 at 6:49 pm
Just wanted to say something about temp jobs. Although your assessment sounds a little too negative, actually unemployment benefits are dangerously incompatible with working at temp agencies. Temp agencies don’t have to give you work, but they retain the right to strike down unemployment claims if you try your luck with other agencies. Your statement about needing roommates is very true though. rj