Reading this, the employers have nothing to do with it. The apartment owner/managers are deciding who is a "preferred" tenant on their own and should take the heat rather than some arbitrary employer.
I guess I understand the idea that someone might want to live in a building filled entirely with people in their own industry... but I never liked the idea. They asked me in college "Do you want to live in a building that's composed only of engineers?" No, no I don't. How am I suppose to expand my mind talking only to people who do the same things I do? I'm suppose to sacrifice the expansion of my mind because English majors party or something?
And that is the primary reason I'm in NYC now instead of Silicon Valley. Of course there is proximity to family and my love of this city in general, but the main reason is that at the end of the day, I go back to my block in Bushwick and spend hours almost every day just sitting with my Puerto Rican neighbors who have lived vastly different lives from mine. And I love it.
The other option would have been to be a in a heavily white and asian male dominated situation with a bunch of people just like me, and i understand the appeal of not having to deal with things that are "different", but for me that's the best part of life.
I'm happy to have lived with whites, blacks, latinos, asians, men, women, straight and gay people throughout my life. And I'm much more comfortable in working class neighborhoods than middle and upper class neighborhoods.
So to me, it sounds like Seattle has a helluva uphill battle if it has to compete with the likes of entirely tech worker dominated buildings and wants to maintain any sort of culture at all besides whatever uniform culture that situation imposes upon an area.
You've nailed the weirdest thing about tech to me. The insularity is horrible. I had the same question posed to me in college and even then I was like "but...tech people are mostly boring." English majors party? Good. Means I'll get out of the house.
I'm lucky in that a lot of my social circle is non-tech right now, but a lot of the keep-to-yourself aspects of Boston's culture don't sit really well with me. I've thought about NYC more and more lately. Might be worth another look, if I can figure out how to generate a client base down there before I make a jump. =)
And that is the primary reason I'm in NYC now instead of Silicon Valley. Of course there is proximity to family and my love of this city in general, but the main reason is that at the end of the day, I go back to my block in Bushwick and spend hours almost every day just sitting with my Puerto Rican neighbors who have lived vastly different lives from mine. And I love it.
The other option would have been to be a in a heavily white and asian male dominated situation with a bunch of people just like me, and i understand the appeal of not having to deal with things that are "different", but for me that's the best part of life.
I'm happy to have lived with whites, blacks, latinos, asians, men, women, straight and gay people throughout my life. And I'm much more comfortable in working class neighborhoods than middle and upper class neighborhoods.
So to me, it sounds like Seattle has a helluva uphill battle if it has to compete with the likes of entirely tech worker dominated buildings and wants to maintain any sort of culture at all besides whatever uniform culture that situation imposes upon an area.