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Originally Posted by ThatDarnSacramentan
It's interesting you'd connect Seattle to Boston as its West Coast counterpart, because in my years of living in both Seattle and Portland, it feels much more that Portland is Boston and Seattle is New York. When I lived in Seattle, almost everyone who came to visit me would remark how much Seattle reminded them of New York (not physically or geographically, of course, but the general "vibe" and culture). That's not really scientific at all, of course. I do think that perhaps there's something to be said about the DNA of both cities based on which American settlers built each place up. For Portland, that was New Englanders, and Seattle, the Terry Brothers who had joined up with the Dennys were from New York (perhaps also worth adding that they named their first site, at present Alki Beach, New York).
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As someone who previously lived in Boston (and Worcester and Provdence) who now lives in Seattle, I Completely agree with this.
Boston, despite its status as a large city (by US standards) and its global academic prowess, is quite stunningly provincial in its actual culture and vibe, due to a massive brain drain problem. People who go to school in Boston, particularly at the big 4, almost NEVER stay there. If youre in tech, you aspire to be in SF, Seattle, Austin, or maybe NYC. If youre in finance, you aspire to NYC. If youre in the arts, NYC or LA.
The only place Boston excels is in biotech, but the only reason is that biotech is a new field, and is still tightly coupled to academic research. Historically, successful companies –and even entire industries– always end up leaving Boston. People forget that all of the major innovations that led to Silicon Valley happened in Boston and New York.
Thus, outside of academia, Boston is actually pretty boring. It reminds me a lot of St. Louis, where I also lived on and off for about 10 years, and which also has a top tier university with a huge biotech presence. Basically, if youre not a PhD doing research, what will you do there? What really is there for you that wouldnt be better elsewhere?
Seattle, like NYC, has its fair share of reseach, but has an absolutely enormous amount of industry employment. Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX, and Google, and Boeing have most of their workforce or (in regard to the latter 3) a lot of senior engineers here. There are also a lot of quantum computing and fusion energy start ups here, which, i should note, are made up almost entirely of people who left Boston.