from Hacker News

Austin's Reign as a Tech Hub Might Be Coming to an End

by watchdogtimer on 5/20/25, 11:38 AM with 25 comments

• by maerF0x0 on 5/20/25, 12:25 PM

  I was there for 2 years. More or less confirmed. Austin had a lot of chances to steal the show, but there's a lot of cultural challenges there. As well a lot of the tech companies there are coddled in that they expect to pay way under market[1].

  Public transit is a challenge in Austin because you get, essentially, 3 months of over 100f daily highs. Anyone who can afford a vehicle with AC is highly incentivized to not take public transit. The experience of 1. having to put on sunscreen everywhere you go, 2. cooking in 100-105f, 3. Transit currently sucks[2] 4. No one wants to invest in infra it appears no one uses... It's a pretty difficult vicious cycle to break. The train on the west side being a notable exception.

  Some other rapid fire surprises:

  - Tech meetups were far fewer (more crypto and sales like than true communities)

  - "Startup" often meant consumer/lifestyle brand than pure tech plays

  - Anecdotally, there seemed to be culture kind of negatively reacting to those who wanted to try for more in their life, kinda like holding eachother down, maybe "Crab buckety" in the sense that a lot of people had small dreams, and couldnt understand or support those who had bigger dreams.

  [1]: (some of the bigger names do have good pay, but lots of littler names have no clue what a nationally competitive offer looks like)

  [2]: Crazy anecdote. One time I flew into austin south airport and was shocked to find an uber to my friend's house was ~$100 when it was normally $40. I was then incensed and aimed to try public transit. That meant i had to take an airport south to main terminal shuttle, wait for a bus that had very poor website and nearly no one could help me with. It did not go to the train line, so it was about a 1 mile walk there. I dragged my bag to the train only to find out they do not run on sundays? What kind of podunk town doesn't run the train 7 days a week? (it wasn't a holiday)

• by comrade1234 on 5/20/25, 12:57 PM

  This is off-topic but still... I would have to go to Austin occasionally for work meetings. I don’t really like live music but it’s pretty much impossible to avoid in Austin. I was out to dinner at a decent restaurant with a business partner and at one point our waiter just completely disappeared. There was a band playing. I made the joke that “maybe he’s in the band” and I looked over at the band and sure enough he’s playing guitar.

• by cebert on 5/20/25, 11:40 AM

  I am hopeful that more tech companies will come to Michigan and Detroit specifically. The cost of living is reasonable and the economy here is in need of diversification.

• by swimorsinka on 5/20/25, 4:56 PM

  I'm seeing similar dynamics occurring with Denver/Boulder. These smaller tech cities have been hit hard by the tech recession.

• by dharbin on 5/20/25, 12:01 PM

  This feels like a contentless article. They gave a statistic and crafted a narrative based on one person’s experience, which leaves me with many more questions than answers.

• by alexfromapex on 5/20/25, 1:28 PM

  So will America's reign, because of rampant abuse and lack of enforcement of the H1B visa system

• by hedora on 5/20/25, 2:46 PM

  That’s too bad. If Austin had enough people in it to be a tech hub, Texas would be solid blue. That’d be the end of the republican party controlling the White House or House (unless they made radical changes to their platform).