Last month Seattle picked up Fast Company’s City of the Year 2009 on the basis of its “divine geography, frontier spirit and an abundance of both artists and geeks” and also got labeled as the 2nd hottest place for startups outside the valley in a recent study.
In the article Fast Company interviewed John Cordell – an Internet Explorer architect – who claimed that Seattle is the best place for software engineers because of the climate:
"You go into a hole and work 80 hours a week for eight months, then come out of the hole and take a break to recharge your batteries. Seattle has eight months of bad weather and four months of absolutely beautiful weather. It's the perfect place for software engineers."
But what might be right for software might not be right for services or “cloud computing” where agility is the name of the game and you’re considered old hat if you’re not shipping code every night and playing Four Square by 6pm and tweeting about how you just assassinated your best friend whilst sipping a frappacino.
I’ve seen it first hand, now the lovely weather is here in Seattle – and it is lovely – people change, there’s less time spent in the office, more time down by the lake or hiking in the mountains - these Seatteites love their good weather and their outdoor activities. I can’t blame them. For most of the year the weather is a little on the dull side so once the sunshine arrives you just want to get out and make the most of it.
Is a more stable climate more conducive to agile software and rapid releases? Would a climate where people are accustomed to the sunshine be better, where programmers don’t mind residing in the air conditioned office whilst they finish their code check in for the day which automatically is published to the cloud?
Does California and specifically Silicon Valley have the upper hand in this climate battle over the clouds, or will Aesop have the final say as the Tortoise and the Hare is replayed?
Photo courtesy of AdagioatMSN from Flickr