I’ve accepted a new job, and it means that we can move back to the states (we’re currently in Canada, and have been kind of unhappy here). We’ve got two options:
If we move to San Diego (where my new employer is), it’s possible that I could get a bit of a raise. My new employer would prefer that I move there and would likely receive a promotion (not guaranteed, though), but I wouldn’t be able to work from home all the time. San Diego seems pretty neat, but it seems to be more expensive. We’ve never lived near San Diego (I’ve never actually been there, at all). Bonus, for me, is that we’d be near the ocean.
If we move to Seattle, we’ll be living near some of our good friends. Rentals seem to be more plentiful, and perhaps cheaper. If we move to someplace other than San Diego, I’ll be able to work from home, but it’s unlikely I’ll ever receive a promotion. We’ve lived in Seattle before.
Any opinions on this? We will be renting at first, but hope to eventually buy a house.
I would double check that rental cost. I used to live in Seattle and still have ties there. I live in SoCal now and spend time in San Diego. My impression of the housing market is the reverse of what you describe
Having lived in Seattle for 21 years, if you asked me to pick, I’d go to San Diego no questions asked. I couldn’t take any more of the gloom.
The gloom is a fairly big consideration. We lived there before, and SAD is definitely a thing. We now live further north, where the dark in winter lasts a long-ass time, and we’ve found that hue lightstrips in the window wells set to a proper time of day lighting scheme help. I do love the idea of having temperate temperatures year round in San Diego.
Another option is that we could move pretty much anywhere else in the US- and, therefore, someplace much cheaper than either. But that’s a hard sell for my wife- if we’re not going to live in San Diego, she wants to live near our friends.
Well, that’s the thing. If we don’t move to San Diego, I’ll be looking for a better job in a few years. Although if we move there, the promotion isn’t guaranteed- just much more likely than if I work fully remotely.
Pros: Beaches. Lots of them, and you can have fires. (At least you could.) Close to Mexico. Nice for a big city. MCAS (formerly NAS) Miramar has great airshows.
Cons: It can get a mite toasty. The other thing is that is’s generally Conservative. My friends and I found Nazi newspapers on our lawns when we were kids.
I wanted to move from L.A. to Seattle, but I ended up moving to Birch Bay (about 115 north of Seattle). Seattle is very expensive. Seattle traffic makes me miss L.A. traffic.
The “working remote” option is guaranteed and not subject to change at the whim of some dumbass micromanager
Then Seattle sounds like the better option.
President-elect Joe Biden captured 61 percent of the vote in San Diego County compared to President Donald Trump’s 37 percent. Biden won over voters throughout the city, the coastal communities and many inland suburbs. Trump dominated in eastern and rural regions.
…although King County (Seattle plus environs) is blue-er, having gone to Biden at almost 75%.
Same for me, substituting “Seattle” for “San Diego.” Hey. I love clouds and rain. It literally is the only place in the US I’d be willing to move to from here (Chicago.)
Heh. During my visit to Chicago this April it seemed to me that the weather was pretty much exactly the same as it would’ve been here in the Seattle area at the time. Our winters are considerably milder than yours, though - we only get significant snow once every couple of years, and it’s usually gone within a day or two.
Could be. My oldest friend lives there, and he’s a Trumper. Since he’s a narcissist, he tends to be what’s most popular. A lot of his FB friends are pretty rabid too.
When I was growing up, it seemed to me San Diego was made up of hippies, the gold-chain-and-golf club crowd, Navy, and Marines.
My daughter lives outside of Seattle now, and my father used to live in San Diego. The weather in San Diego is much, much better. When we went up to Seattle recently I discovered to my shock that gas prices in Washington are even higher than in California, which is saying a lot. I like both Seattle and San Diego as cities. I think housing prices might be the determining factor. Unless the weather is a big deal.
There’s a lot better skiing near Seattle than near San Diego. That would be a determining factor for me.
I love hiking in the desert, but the range of environments near Seattle (big mountains, volcanoes, rain forest) is more appealing. I’ve lived in Seattle for a few years and the weather never bothered me, but it might be different at this stage of my life. SD has lovely weather, but I like the changing of the seasons.
I live in the Seattle metro area (the city of Bellevue) and love it. Partially the city and surroundings and partially the community we have in our particular neighborhood.
That said, if I was approaching this from a blank slate (i.e. new to both regions) I’d have a hard time choosing which city is better. We did visit San Diego a few years back and loved it quite a bit as tourists. It was our kid’s mid-winter break and a week in the sun at Legoland and the Safari park and the beach was a welcome reprieve from a Seattle February. On the other hand, Seattle feels more like a well defined city with more densely packed urban centers. That is for sure more my style and Seattle is quite satisfying in terms of cultural attractions, music venues, theater, etc.
Cities aside, I’m not clear from your post how attached you are to this new job. Is it something you’re genuinely excited about, or is it a stepping stone to something better in the States?
My personal experience with working from home is that it was excruciating when I was the outlier (everyone was in the office in Atlanta except me working from home in Sacramento) but perfectly fine now where I know everyone well (I worked in person with them in the past) and everyone is pretty distributed (I could go into a downtown Seattle office but I’d just have to find a conference room to talk on the phone to the people I actually daily interact with anyway).
If you’re starting out and everyone else is in the office in San Diego besides you I think that’ll be tough. It’ll be easy to be out of the loop and forgotten about and making connections will be an uphill battle. Even our distributed team struggled during COVID with retention of new hires brought on solely remotely. And that’s not even taking into account that they’ve explicitly told you that they prefer you to be there and that promotions likely depend on it.
If I was invested in and excited about a career at this specific company I think I would definitely pick San Diego. Less important if you’re planning on looking for the next thing as soon as you start this…
If I move to Seattle, I’m going to be going in knowing that I’m unlikely to get a promotion (since they’ve said that they really want the position above me to be local to the company- ie, San Diego. As such, I’ll be taking the job knowing that my chances of my promotion lie elsewhere. I’ll work for this new employer until something better comes along.
If I move to San Diego I’ll have a chance at that promotion, and will intend to stay. I’m maybe ten years from retirement, and I’d really like to not change jobs again. The problem is, the promotion isn’t guaranteed.
(The lack of promotion is one of the main reasons I’m looking for a job right now- my current employer has dangled the idea of a promotion in front of me for a couple of years now, and I recently found that that they’d given it to someone else a while back. The new job, even without the promotion, is a 30% pay bump over my current job.)