We are considering moving down to FL from the Bay Area. How's the overall scene? I mean tech employment, culture, people, kids education etc. Would love some insights from people who made a similar move to central fl.
For lack of better words - South Florida has too much of a “superficial/materialistic” vibe for our taste. We are your standard issue Asians who have a, generally speaking, more conservative bent and strong focus on academics for our children and the general environment surrounding them. (Not saying it’s better than others or anything like that, just saying it’s what we value)
Tampa is pretty awesome to be honest. I moved in 2014 from a northern state and wish I would have years ago. Tech employment is on the rise, but you'll have to work remote for a company in a major market if you want to make serious money. Salaries here for tech are slowly starting to creep upwards. Pre-pandemic I didn't see an offer for over 100k, and I now regularly see job listings and are hit up by local recruiters for the low 100s. Oodles of startups in the Tampa Bay area have sprung up overnight. The culture is outstanding. I like to say that we have little microcosms of NYC in the Tampa area. The Gulf Coast has a lot of ethnic communities including Greek, Italian, German, PR, and Cuban. Hillsborough County has one of the best school districts in the state, and the private schools here are excellent. As one would figure, it's a melting pot here. We've got folks fresh off the boat, a ton of transplants, and native Floridians of course. It's southern, but not too southern, with a mix of midwestern and northeast thrown in for good measure. As I'm fond of telling friends from up north; I know more people from my home state living in Florida that I genuinely like, than I did living in my home state.
One thing to take note of: Florida had 250k people move here last year. Tampa EXPLODED. It feels like there's 4x the number of people here that there were just 5 years ago. Traffic has definitely gotten worse if you're a commuter or if you choose to live out in the burbs outside of the city proper. It's rare to find a popular restaurant with less than an hour wait on the weekends now, which never used to be the case. Hillsborough County trends Conservative. The City of Tamps trends Liberal, but I personally find that there's a fine mix and nothing too obnoxious one way or the other. As a moderate I'm quite comfortable here.
All that I ask of people moving to Florida from predominantly left-leaning locales is that folks remember why they're choosing to leave, and not to vote for the same policies that pushed them to seek a new home.