Tech bro moves from CA to Austin - immediately reverses course after calling culture 'bland'

[Anonymous]

He uprooted his wife and kids, found a nice Austin suburb - Bee Cave, bought a 4,000 square foot $1 million house and then decided he hated it.

Brett Alder, a director of semiconductor business development at Japanese firm Hamamatsu, has been branded 'entitled' and a 'douche' for writing in Business Insider that his relocation in 2015 was an 'expensive mistake' when he joined the near-700,000 Californians who have upped sticks to move to Texas in the last 10 years.

https://www.businessinsider.com/moving-california-austin-texas-10-things-i-wish-i-knew-2021-1

Bee Cave 4,000 square foot homes -

https://www.redfin.com/TX/Austin/4205-Vail-Dv-78738/home/31160058

[Anonymous]

His pros:
Property taxes were .5% lower than CA

His cons:
His base water bill is $100 with zero usage and he claimed it would have been in the high 100s for landscapes
Everything is expensive - restaurants, pool maintenance, repair men
Summer heat
Bad weather and home damage
No public spaces to go - ex driving 90 minutes to get to a outdoorsy area
No natural resources - mountains, rivers, falls etc in a 7-hour radius
He drove 40 minutes for horrible Indian food
No school choice
No diverse
Poor tech - Austin has no Uber or Lyft
Urge to build bigger and better + sprawl means it was 'difficult' to sell his house for the price he wanted

He moved back to the Bay Area.

[Anonymous]

Six years isn't immediate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Six years isn't immediate.

He moved back to California after only a year. He just decided to write about it in 2021.

I mean with this house and lot size in the suburbs I'm not sure what culture he was expecting anyway.

[Anonymous]

I know that area. This is all a bit of an exaggeration. He was very near Lake Travis. He could have had a boat like a lot of people do for weekend fun. There are plenty of parks around there. Sounds like he just didn't do enough research before moving. It's less expensive than some of the more desirable closer in areas and that's probably why he ended up there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know that area. This is all a bit of an exaggeration. He was very near Lake Travis. He could have had a boat like a lot of people do for weekend fun. There are plenty of parks around there. Sounds like he just didn't do enough research before moving. It's less expensive than some of the more desirable closer in areas and that's probably why he ended up there.

He paid $1.8 million for a 4,000 square foot house. If he was going to more expensive that what's the point of leaving CA?

[Anonymous]

I saw this online. He comes off as rude and dim, in part because he's trying to make a buck by writing about his failure to think about a big move. That said, I don't like Austin and would never live there. I don't get what people like about it.

- Bay Area native who likes NOVA pretty well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know that area. This is all a bit of an exaggeration. He was very near Lake Travis. He could have had a boat like a lot of people do for weekend fun. There are plenty of parks around there. Sounds like he just didn't do enough research before moving. It's less expensive than some of the more desirable closer in areas and that's probably why he ended up there.

He paid $1.8 million for a 4,000 square foot house. If he was going to more expensive that what's the point of leaving CA?

That price doesn't seem quite right. That's not the going rate for houses there. Looks like he had a lot of land. Most people in Lakeway/Bee Cave aren't on huge lots. In the Redfin link the home price was $866K for a home in Falconhead. The more expensive houses on larger lots could be 1.8M but that's not average.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:His pros:
Property taxes were .5% lower than CA

His cons:
His base water bill is $100 with zero usage and he claimed it would have been in the high 100s for landscapes
Everything is expensive - restaurants, pool maintenance, repair men
Summer heat
Bad weather and home damage
No public spaces to go - ex driving 90 minutes to get to a outdoorsy area
No natural resources - mountains, rivers, falls etc in a 7-hour radius
He drove 40 minutes for horrible Indian food
No school choice
No diverse
Poor tech - Austin has no Uber or Lyft
Urge to build bigger and better + sprawl means it was 'difficult' to sell his house for the price he wanted

He moved back to the Bay Area.

Sigh. This one guy, getting all this publicity for one article. Nearly three quarters of a million people have moved from California to Texas in the past 10 years, me being one of them. Don't let this dude paint the only picture: The vast majority of us are VERY happy with our decision, and wouldn't dream of going back to Cali. And this guy is straight up lying about the lack of diversity, food choices and "no mountains and rivers w/in 7 hours." There's plenty of hiking trails right in Austin, and Big Bend is like a 4-hour drive. The thing he doesn't get is, most of us didn't move here to make Texas into California. We don't want to "change" it. We left the People's Republic for a reason.

[Anonymous]

I mean, maybe he’s regretting it now due to Covid? Because everyone else is fleeing.... https://realm.hearstnp.com/account/login?returnUrl=%2Fconnect%2Fauthorize%2Fcallback%3Fclient_id%3Dhdn.js%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.sfgate.com%252Fhdn%252Fhrlm%252Fp%252Fcallback.html%26response_type%3Did_token%2520token%26scope%3Dopenid%2520email%2520hdn.sanfrancisco%26state%3D4c3f64f46efe4b7995aa64d56daa7e3e%26nonce%3D2cf243c760634eb4a9dce55b65264453%26trgid%3D1032%26tenant%3DaGRuLnNhbmZyYW5jaXNjbw%253D%253D%26siteid%3Dc2ZnYXRlLmNvbQ%253D%253D%26checkSession%3Dtrue%26thirdPartyCookies%3Dfalse

[Anonymous]

It’s news that a guy moves to a suburb and finds that it’s...suburban?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Poor tech - Austin has no Uber or Lyft

I had some business meetings in Austin 2 years ago and I took Uber all the time.

[Anonymous]

Texas has incredible diversity and food. If you can’t find it you have no creativity and no common sense. The Indian population is massive. No sympathy for him whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Poor tech - Austin has no Uber or Lyft

I had some business meetings in Austin 2 years ago and I took Uber all the time.

Maybe you were there in one of the years they weren't fighting with the city

https://www.hyrecar.com/blog/uber-lyft-back-austin-tx/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know that area. This is all a bit of an exaggeration. He was very near Lake Travis. He could have had a boat like a lot of people do for weekend fun. There are plenty of parks around there. Sounds like he just didn't do enough research before moving. It's less expensive than some of the more desirable closer in areas and that's probably why he ended up there.

He paid $1.8 million for a 4,000 square foot house. If he was going to more expensive that what's the point of leaving CA?

Um, in Silicon Valley that price will get you 1500sf if you’re lucky. Housing prices are insane there.