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Poll: If you're in the US, What State Do You Live In?
167 points by shawndumas on Feb 14, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 171 comments
Including D.C.
California
834 points
New York
271 points
Washington
189 points
Texas
183 points
Massachusetts
145 points
Illinois
96 points
Colorado
88 points
Pennsylvania
85 points
Oregon
75 points
Florida
72 points
North Carolina
66 points
Georgia
63 points
Michigan
62 points
Virginia
62 points
Ohio
55 points
Minnesota
53 points
Arizona
48 points
New Jersey
48 points
Utah
40 points
Wisconsin
40 points
Maryland
39 points
Washington D.C
37 points
Missouri
37 points
Tennessee
34 points
Indiana
28 points
South Carolina
28 points
Connecticut
25 points
Arkansas
19 points
Nevada
19 points
Kansas
17 points
New Hampshire
17 points
Alabama
15 points
Nebraska
15 points
Hawaii
14 points
Kentucky
14 points
Oklahoma
14 points
Idaho
13 points
Iowa
13 points
Maine
11 points
Vermont
11 points
Alaska
10 points
Louisiana
10 points
Montana
10 points
New Mexico
10 points
Rhode Island
10 points
North Dakota
8 points
Delaware
7 points
West Virginia
6 points
Wyoming
6 points
Mississippi
4 points
South Dakota
4 points


I wonder how much this chart will be skewed since it is almost 5pm on the east coast right now vs. late afternoon for the west coast.


I suspect the answer is "significantly". It would have been better to post in the morning.


well, at our shared tech space downtown Lexington, it was beer and bourbon night so... you lost like 5 Kentucky votes right there.


You posted this at the end of the day on the East Coast on Valentine's day? Skew results much?


http://hnpollthing.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

Edit: And now the script automatically renders into a template and deploys to s3 every 5 minutes.

Here's a script that produces the ratios between number of votes and the population of each state. It's ugly but you know... whatever...

http://pastebin.com/pDU9iRnN

    Python 2.7
    argparse==1.2.1
    beautifulsoup4==4.1.3
    requests==1.1.0
    wsgiref==0.1.2


Interesting, me and another programmer I work with just voted for North Dakota, yet it was only raised to 1 point.

I wonder if HN limits votes by IP Address.


This is from 2.5 years of web traffic to my Hacker Newsletter project (http://hackernewsletter.com), which a very large portion comes from HN so I think it could be useful:

California 21.79%

New York 10.37%

Texas 6.74%

Massachusetts 5.07%

Florida 4.37%

Illinois 4.22%

Washington 3.82%

Georgia 3.19%

Pennsylvania 2.98%

Virginia 2.60%

North Carolina 2.26%

Ohio 2.15%

Michigan 2.11%

New Jersey 2.08%

Colorado 2.05%

Maryland 1.86%

Maine 1.78%

Oregon 1.63%

Minnesota 1.63%

Missouri 1.37%

DC 1.33%

Arizona 1.31%

Tennessee 1.24%

Connecticut 1.06%

Utah 1.06%

Indiana 1.05%

Wisconsin 0.87%

Alabama 0.85%

Kentucky 0.70%

South Carolina 0.61%

Oklahoma 0.57%

Iowa 0.52%

Kansas 0.49%

Louisiana 0.46%

New Hampshire 0.43%

Nevada 0.39%

Nebraska 0.36%

Alaska 0.32%

Hawaii 0.29%

New Mexico 0.29%

Idaho 0.28%

Rhode Island 0.27%

Arkansas 0.19%

North Dakota 0.18%

Vermont 0.17%

Mississippi 0.15%

West Virginia 0.11%

Delaware 0.11%

Montana 0.11%

Wyoming 0.07%

South Dakota 0.07%


You should include the territories for the sake of completeness. I know of a few Puerto Ricans, including myself, who frequent this website.


... and "not in U.S.", 'cause it's interesting to see what proportion of readers couldn't participate in the poll...


Agreed, i'm in the US Virgin Islands.


That's where I want to be.


I work for quite possibly the only start up here. we're hiring!


St Croix here.


I wish I was at your place working. It's been freezing here lately! (Moraga, CA)


What, no "Denial"?


US, not Egypt.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night!


Isn't that the D in Washington DC?;)

(The C is Confusion.)


Wrong continent.


Questions for those few living in New Mexico: How is the job market for a SW engineer? Do you all pretty much live in ABQ, or is anyone is Santa Fe?


My impression from talking to people in the area is that the investor money is in Santa Fe, but most of the programming jobs are in Albuquerque. Of course Albuquerque is about 10X the size of Santa Fe.


Thanks!


Strangely, I've never been able to get a job in Albuquerque, but I have worked here in Socorro and in Española, of all places. I did contracting in Albuquerque and started my failed business there. You can certainly make a decent living at it, but if you're motivated largely by money, your friends in Chicago and the Bay will ruin your self-esteem. There are always openings around. Rural ones, too—we're looking for a group lead software engineer in my group at the NRAO right now.

Most of us are working for less than industry rates, some substantially less, depending on the location and the kind of work. People working at the labs and Boeing make probably the best money but put up with the most crap. There are a few medical/dental firms in Albuquerque, Xilinx and some other random stuff. I honestly have no idea what they're like. Aerospace. A lot of government contracting, a lot of Manpower-type contracting too. The right skills seem never to go out of fashion—Windows, Oracle, .NET. It's funny, because the southwest used to be kind of a big unix shop.

With specialized skills, you could be "the guy" in Albuquerque without being terribly special—Rails, Node.js, etc. Last time I went to a Barcamp up there about 12 people showed up and most of them were essentially designers.

If you want to work as a software engineer in Santa Fe, I'm sure you can find a position there, but you may need to be resourceful to find it. State government is there, for instance. They outsource nearly everything but I'm sure they have a few developers in a basement somewhere. There's the eponymous Santa Fe Institute. There are colleges, most in the spectrum past non-technical and into unreality, but a surprising number of kids show up at NMT from Santa Fe with a strong background in CS. They have to be getting it somewhere there. I'd imagine there's small businesses. Santa Fe has one of the higher costs of living in the state, so maybe the pay is closer to industry standards, but it's just a wild guess. There are resorts up there with expansive web presences that need to be maintained. The casinos always have strange openings too, but they tend to be recycled frequently due to political upheavals.

It's a good question. It's a pretty rarefied market. If you want to be here, I'm sure you can make it work, but if you're in it for wealth do a stint in the Bay and bring it back with you. :)


Thanks for the response! I was thinking that if I couldn't find anything I wanted to do out there I could work remotely for half the year and be in the bay area for the other half. I have friends in NM and you can't beat the skiing and green chilies.

What did you work on in Española if you don't mind me asking? I ask because that is specifically where my friends live.


I'm in Las Cruces, 3 hours south of Albuquerque (where I used to live, hence my name). Not too many SW jobs down here, but the few there are are very good.


I'm tempted by Cruces, but I think my family would disown me. Also, it's a bit Texas-y for my taste. You do have lots of great eating and the best furniture store in the state though, so it's tempting.


Anyone in Knoxville? :)

I knew California would be pretty high up there because of SV but I didn't realize so many people on here live there. For people who are in CA, do you live there because that's where most of the tech start-ups are or because it's a nice place (or both)?


I'm a country boy who grew up in the midwest and came here when a company I worked for in Portland got acquired. I've been stuck here for 8 long years, now, and constantly dream about going somewhere else.

California is fine, the SV is okay, there are certainly jobs and lots of opportunity and at this point I've built quite the network ... but seriously, I miss being able to go outside and see a field of corn from time to time.

One day...


Born and raised in the Midwest, moved to SoCal for two years so my wife could complete her master's. We both absolutely hated the area, moved back out to "the sticks" and haven't looked back. Cost of living is lower, quality of life is higher.


The entire space between San Jose and LA is farmland :)


Hey now, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara are places too.


Nah. A few minutes outside San Luis Obispo, it's nothing but cows. I live in Cambria, 40 minutes north of SLO. I used to be able to look out my living room window and watch the cows until they turned the East-West ranch into a park. And a few miles north you get zebras.


I take highway 5. If you take the 1 then there's all sorts of cool stuff along the way.

Not to say that farms aren't cool. I actually look in amazement at how good farmers have gotten at growing crops the entire drive down.


Hey now, farms are places too.


As I was reading your comment, I glanced out the window to look at an Amish buggy cruising by.


Came out to San Francisco for an interview, and my wife and I both loved it. A year later, I got another interview out here, landed the job, and we decided to move. We tell people it was 50/50: half for the job, half for the adventure.

We miss our friends in Atlanta, but San Francisco and the surrounding area are stunningly beautiful.


How significant did you feel the change was from Atlanta? And, as a better indicator, where in Atlanta did you live? I'm from North Atlanta, and I 'm curious to hear. PM me if you don't want to share location data with the world.


I grew up in cherokee county, went to UGA for undergrad and GT for grad school. Lived in midtown for a year and East Point for a year (it was cheap!). I came out to CA for a summer in undergrad and fell in love with the parks. Came out again for an internship in grad school and fell in love with a girl. Moved out here in 2007.

Compared to Georgia/Atlanta, the biggest changes I've noticed are: 1) everything is much much more expensive. a house that would be ~$200k-$250k inside the perimeter will cost ~$700k-$800k on the peninsula. houses in the $300-$400k range would probably go for $1-2mm out here. Average restaurant bills are ~$50 for my wife & I for what I would consider pretty "normal" places (we'd probably average $25-30 in comparable Atlanta restaurants). I'm lucky that my wife's job has on-site daycare for only $1500/month. The one exception is veggies--I routinely go to the local farmer's market and walk away with a week's worth of veggies for under $20. 2) at the same time, salaries are a lot higher. even if your housing/expenses take up the same percentage of your paycheck, your disposable income will generally go a lot further (an iPad costs what it costs anywhere in the U.S.) I've bought things since moving West that I probably never would've spent money on living in GA, just because I had that extra disposable income (i.e. flying to the UGA-Arizona State game a few years back). This can be a double-edged sword, though--if you want to do your own thing or start your own company, it will be MUCH harder to do that here than in Atlanta (making $50k in the app store is a hell of a lot cooler in Atlanta than it is in silicon valley) 3) people are generally pretty nice, but not interested at all in getting to know you or chatting randomly. we've been in the same house for 4 years now and barely know the neighbors 4) the amount of stuff within driving distance is really, really incredible--including the excellent state and county parks. people here are MUCH more interested in going outdoors on the weekends (whereas I found in GA people mostly just hang out on the weekends, maybe having a bbq or going to a lake). 5) if you're an engineer and decent at what you do, you'll never want for a job. 6) the work is a lot more high-energy -- i know engineers in ATL who work from 9-5 (or less) and more or less coast through the day... but are smart enough to get all their work done. that sort of attitude does not fly at all in silicon valley. if you feel like you're smarter than everyone around you in Atlanta, move out here and you'll be pleasantly surprised 7) if you're interested in things like hackathons, there's always something going on and it's pretty easy to meet like-minded people 8) the weather's awesome


Holy cow, I'm from Cherokee County (Towne Lake) and went to GT as well! What a small world... I'm debating whether I want to move west after grad school. I'd really like to get involved in a start-up. Although I doubt there's many chemical engineering start-ups compared to software/tech ones.

> People are generally pretty nice, but not interested at all in getting to know you or chatting randomly.

Could you elaborate on this? I've heard things like this from other people.


I don't think it's that people are "mean" or less friendly than in the South--it's just harder to break through with strangers. People in general are a little less outgoing towards strangers (not sure if that's the right word, but can't think of one better) and a little more focused on their own things. That may be because the work culture is so focused--free time is a little more valuable when you're working long hours and people just may not be as willing to stop in a grocery store and chat for half an hour on the best way to cook zucchini.

I guess another way to put it would be that everyone is headed somewhere (and not always a place), whereas living in the South I remember the culture being a lot more about relaxing and waiting for things to come to you. It's not as bad as New York, where everyone is literally headed somewhere, but more like a state of mind--like everyone here is working on a difficult puzzle in their head, even when they're not at the office.

Take a trip out to Tahoe or Yosemite and that mostly shuts off--people you meet on hiking trails and in restaurants/hotels are warm, friendly, and usually pretty chatty.


I grew up in the South too (Memphis, TN) and I live in Silicon Valley. It's kind of hard to elaborate on this, but I would say that Californians keep to themselves more than Southeasterners (people in Texas are a totally different story than SEC states), but when you get to actually know CA folks, they're far nicer people who genuinely care more for their friends and do more for them. Basically, Californians are maybe harder to befriend, but worth way more than you do. That's my anecdotal experience anyway, and some of my favorite people in the world live in Southern states. Really there are great people and terrible people everywhere in the world.


I lived in Midtown for a while, then bought a house in East Point and lived there for six or seven years.

It was a huge change, but mostly because of the lack of social support: it would have been as hard to move anywhere.

We also made a conscious decision to live in San Francisco (first in the Mission, now just South of there in Bernal Heights): if we'd wanted to do suburbs, we could do that just fine in Atlanta for a fraction of the price.

As I mentioned, we owned a house in East Point. We don't realistically expect to be able to buy a house in San Francisco anytime soon, possibly ever, unless we have an unexpected windfall that would take care of a huge downpayment. Then again, our rent of $3k/month (typical for two bedrooms, dogs allowed) would go pretty far in a mortgage if we did manage it.

My intuition (not based on fact) is that for a capable, experienced programmer, Atlanta has relatively high salaries, and relatively low cost of living.

Then again, we have mountains, a vast diversity of state and national parks, the ocean, beautiful views, skiing, walkable neighborhoods with corner stores, no bugs for most of the year (you can leave un-screened windows open!), etc... etc...


This should probably always skew towards CA because of SV, but don't forget that the population of CA is the highest in the US by ~30% to begin with. I imagine there are a ton of people living here who were also born and raised here (myself included)


Same here.


I'm 1.5 hours from Knoxville in the most rural possible direction.

(Lived in the Bay Area in the past, still like to visit.)


I'm up in Johnson City and grew up in Knoxville. I love Tennessee, but there is zero tech scene as you know. I do freelancing remotely and it provides a great life for us.


I moved here because I'm in love with San Francisco (and really hated Florida, where I lived before), plus I work in the tech industry. I'd still want to live here even if I wasn't involved in tech.


Why did you hate FL?


I'm guessing this guy was really bad PR : https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan


haha, I love the florida man twitter account! But really, Florida ain't so bad ... I live in Orlando. There's lots of activity going on, lots of meetups, and lots of energy.


Orlando is in Florida, but I wouldn't call it "Florida". ;)

That's like Austin is in Texas, but it ain't "Texas".


> Orlando is in Florida, but I wouldn't call it "Florida". ;)

So what would you call "Florida" then?

> That's like Austin is in Texas, but it ain't "Texas".

That statement is mostly wrong. Yes, Austin is a very unique place. However, I think your perception of what constitutes "Texas" is biased and incorrect, based on that statement and the sentiment that typically underpins it.


haha, very true ... but then, why would any techie want to live anywhere else other than a hub. I don't think you'll be attending many tech meetups in Ocala ;)


> ... and lots of energy.

Unfortunately, much of that energy is thermal... (-.-;)


I rode my motorcycle to work earlier this week and last week. Could have probably done so in a t-shirt (though I tend to wear a jacket anyways, just for safety) ... this is in February, when much of the northeast was being blasted by snow. A little thermal energy can be a good thing ;)


... in Orlando. That's not really fair to call all of Florida Orlando. Orlando and Tampa have theme parks, college towns, and are much more active than most of Florida from what I gather


I was born here. So were my parents. I've been all over the world, I don't think I'd rather live anywhere else. Life is just great here


I was raised in California and I just happened to enjoy building websites as a kid so it was a no brainer to move to Silicon Valley when I became an adult.

I just wish it wasn't so damn expensive to live here. States like Colorado and Arizona have been on my mind a lot lately since you can get a beautiful house out there for what it costs to buy a condo here.


I was also born and raised in California (Redding to be exact). I've since lived in the bay, NYC, Minneapolis (amazing city BTW just freaky cold winters) and AZ. I'm currently in AZ (for the third time) and am staying. The startup scene out here is frowning and there's a lit of resources and meet ups and like minded folk out here. I highly advise folks to check it out. For what would cost you 1.2-1.8 Million for a house in the Silicon Valley you can get the same here in az for 200-300K with a much larger a pool and a bugger back yard.

If anyone reading this is from AZ, let me know.


I'll +1 this.

The startup scene is definitely growing in AZ. There are plenty of interesting people doing interesting things. The low cost of living, increasing number of awesome meetups, and growing co-working community is a pretty good sign of things to come. I've met passionate entrepreneurs at almost every corner of the state. Just off the top of my head--Flagstaff has NACET; Tucson is leading the open data movement; Chandler has Gangplank; Phoenix has CO+HOOT & SeedSpot; Mesa has a wonderful Hackerspace; and Marana was recently elected a top digital city in 2012.

That said, there's room for improvement. There aren't a lot of people with experience investing in hi-tech (lots hi-tech military stuff, but not the hi-tech that HN normally discusses); as a community, we don't have really good marketing muscle; there are few veterans willing to recycle capital; and not a lot of foreign direct investment because people have this impression that folks from AZ are crazy.

I love that place though. You can live in a goddamn mansion for the prices you pay in SF.


I am in Arizona, and voted appropriately. However, I am actively in the process of relocating to Washington state. I have lived half of my life here, but I am just tired of Arizona. The tech sector here is poor. Local education is bad (reference Intel CFO Gregg Barrett). I love Arizona's geography and weather, but I can't take the toxic politics, anti-education, and pro-white-elderly social climate. It's the social atmosphere amongst the other tech people I know here that I'm really running away from. All the people I know from Ebay/Paypal, TGen, GoDaddy, ASU, etc just seem miserable and I don't blame them, but I won't be amongst them any longer.


I'm in AZ as well, as far as software development goes... the pay:cost-of-living ratio is really good, so is the unemployment rate... we had the bubble bust in late 2001 (just after 9-11), and it recovered a little faster here, compared to California... Though a lot of the jobs in IT are on the more boring side, there are a lot of user groups for everything from .Net and Java to Python or NodeJS.


Nice to see some fellow Arizonans. I agree with the great cost of living to salary ratio, but unfortunately I've ended up in an industry where I really don't want to be. And I'm having a tough time finding something new here.


Stupid auto correct. Should say "the startup scene is growing" not frowning. Doh.


Colorado housing prices are down, great time to move. And IT is picking up :)


I just moved to CA from OK last year. I moved for a few reasons. 1) family -- more stuff to do here (understatement) 2) I don't fit in with OK culture (red + religious) 3) career -- I'm a programmer


Funny to find Knoxvillains here. I've looked once or twice for Coursera meet-ups and concluded that K-town was a bit of a tech desert. (Curiously, several pagan/witch meetups are available.)


It's 5:20pm on the east coast so the numbers are going to be way off.

Edit: This was posted at 4:20pm EST and normally I don't check HN much after 4, I am just waiting on something before I call it a day.


I live in Califonia, but since I do not live in SV (or anywhere with a noticeable tech scene), my answer must be because it is a nice place.

Anyone hiring in Santa Barbara? SB is my eventual goal.


We aren't quite in Santa Barbara - we're an hour south, in Camarillo - but we are hiring. http://omniupdate.com/about/careers/


Parents moved here in the 70s to join tech. I was born here, and seem to gravitate back home even when I leave for a few years.


I live here because I was born here. :) Always thought I'd move somewhere else, but now I can't imagine myself doing it.


K-Town is here. It's quiet, but not dead.


Keep in mind that California has two tech hubs (Silicon Valley and San Diego), plus a large city in Los Angeles.


Sometimes I feel like these polls just produce a population heatmap, like in https://xkcd.com/1138/


It's likely to be similar, but then one obvious point of interest would be significant deviations (or the lack thereof) from a population heatmap.


It would be personally interesting if the Californa votes could be split into northern California (and presumeably SV), and Southern Cal.


Three hackers in Alaska so far. That's a hacker density of one hacker per 195,470.66667 square miles.


Anybody else in Columbus, OH? This place is the best.


It took some courage, but I'm willing to admit I'm in Columbus Ohio.


Also living in Columbus. I just look at it as that there are far worse places to live in Ohio (not to name any of them) :)


Related Columbus, OH post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5196980


I'm near Cincinnati, OH


I work remotely from Louisville and visit Columbus every other week or so. Email is in my profile if anyone wants to meetup.


And voted as such.


I live here. It's the best place in Ohio, for sure.


It would be interesting to see the results of this weighted by state population.


Of course, PG/RTM could generate a fairly accurate heatmap by running analysis on the webserver logs. I'd be curious to see the "official" results, if they were willing to release them.


Why is it that HN doesn't use Google Analytics? lol, parsing raw server logs are a pain - is there a service that exists where you can upload a log and it will parse and display it in a neat format?


Internet content that's meant for affluent, educated professionals will always skew heavily towards California and New York generally (including HN, but I work with a lot of media organizations and their Google Analytics profiles bear this out).

The surprise here is Washington and Massachusetts overtaking Illinois, which would seem to suggest that the large tech community in Seattle and Boston makes up for the much smaller population of those metro areas than the population of Chicago.


I'm in Illinois, but the St. Louis area, not Chicagoland.


Kansas City right here. Midwest awwww yeah!


Washington State actually seems the most disproportionately represented (relative to population)


Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon; all have or had their headquarters near Seattle.

Puget sound metro is just as big and bad as Silicon Valley. It's also subject to more indoor weather, which is why engineers who live there are more productive...


It was the same on Reddit.


soo 1. California 2. New York and 3. Texas

hardly surprising


These are the most populous states, so you are correct. The better metric would be to figure out the "hacker density" of each state.


If you divide the responses per state over population, DC has a strong lead in "Hacker News User Density". VT, MA, and WA are pretty close to each other, followed by CA, DE, and CO. It would be interesting to compare these results to % urban/rural populations.


Major population centers are always going to get the most votes. I suspect in most cases people already live where they want to or at least are content/familiar with where they are. That generates a vote for home..


Washington creeping up on that third place spot. Not surprising considering all the northwestern tech companies. Wouldn't be surprised if wa ranked second or third for tech people/total population.


So here are the results so far scaled to population. I took the poll result, divided by population, multiplied by 1,000,000.

Edit: formatting

34.79234505 22  District of Columbia 632,323

12.46916781 86  Washington 6,897,012

10.53242301 70  Massachusetts 6,646,144

9.463366651 360  California 38,041,430

9.105914747 26  Utah 2,855,287

8.719395243 34  Oregon 3,899,353

7.987080099 5  Vermont 626,011

7.903489526 41  Colorado 5,187,582

6.949319685 136  New York 19,570,261

6.814475157 9  New Hampshire 1,320,718

5.468597264 4  Alaska 731,449

4.833487292 26  Minnesota 5,379,139

4.760580867 5  Rhode Island 1,050,292

4.504765148 58  Illinois 12,875,255

4.361612575 4  Delaware 917,092

4.287993048 3  North Dakota 699,628

4.12008994 27  Arizona 6,553,255

3.76168379 5  Maine 1,329,192

3.645545107 95  Texas 26,059,203

3.390829366 10  Arkansas 2,949,131

3.342295327 12  Connecticut 3,590,347

3.298367784 27  Virginia 8,185,867

3.233586182 6  Nebraska 1,855,525

3.225824337 32  Georgia 9,919,945

3.143337225 18  Wisconsin 5,726,398

3.133366087 5  Idaho 1,595,728

3.076269015 30  North Carolina 9,752,073

2.984655884 3  Montana 1,005,141

2.963763963 14  South Carolina 4,723,723

2.933017771 26  New Jersey 8,864,590

2.883491226 11  Oklahoma 3,814,820

2.872917225 4  Hawaii 1,392,313

2.822988023 17  Missouri 6,021,988

2.787999151 18  Tennessee 6,456,243

2.585490416 33  Pennsylvania 12,763,536

2.549042299 15  Maryland 5,884,563

2.537214595 7  Nevada 2,758,931

2.529504136 25  Michigan 9,883,360

2.42558227 7  Kansas 2,885,905

2.155854249 4  West Virginia 1,855,413

1.99233816 23  Ohio 11,544,225

1.917970327 4  New Mexico 2,085,538

1.760055924 34  Florida 19,317,568

1.734870197 1  Wyoming 576,412

1.659054716 8  Alabama 4,822,023

1.626446806 5  Iowa 3,074,186

1.529675553 10  Indiana 6,537,334

1.199970241 1  South Dakota 833,354

1.141444361 5  Kentucky 4,380,415

1.005050041 3  Mississippi 2,984,926

0.86920752 4  Louisiana 4,601,893


One person from South Dakota responded, and you've used that to determine a score to 9 decimal places?

You really need to only show scores with at least a certain number of respondents. You should also round to the nearest integer.


5 minutes with Excel - take it for what its worth ;)


I really think this table would look better if you just did 3 significant digits.


I would love to see final results normalized to population. Also, after factoring in internet access.

That is, the distribution of per capita (or per internet accessing population) HN engagement.


So, you 7 or so other people in Alaska - where are you, and what kind of stuff do you do? The tech scene up here seems pretty sparse outside of oil and telecom stuff.


First 22 years in Ohio, last six months in Chicago, Illinois.


Welcome to the best city in the US! Go get some brussels sprouts at Belly Shack.


Belly Shack is great! And only a ten minute walk from my apartment. It's cool to see a decent-sized Chicago presence on HN.


If one MUST live in a city, I vote Chicago.


I was born and raise in Cincinnati. Moved out west (to SV) about 5 years ago.

Have thought about Chicago or NYC as possible places to relocate if we move to the midwest or east coast.


Sounds like an upgrade.


Better yet, it will more accurately reflect how many people from each state will bother to take the time to respond...


New York here.

Edit: I'm surprised Texas isn't higher than that. Pretty big hub for tech there and, of course, Dallas is the home of TI.


Also HP and Dell.


HP headquarters is in Palo Alto, CA actually


So there are about 25> of us from Wisconsin. What city are you guys from? I live in Milwaukee.


Madtown here. Any others? I wouldn't mind grabbing a beer with some fellow HNers some time (I can bring two of us).


I'm fairly confident that we're all from Milwaukee or Madison, with one or two in Green Bay.


I'm in the Fox Valley.


Yerba Buena. Where are all these states you guys are talking about? I don't see them on the map...


Us Wisconsin folk are probably keeping quiet, so Chicago will keep forgetting we're up here.


I'm trying to get out of Wisconsin. I've tried moving to California twice in the past two years, but I just can't handle the high cost of living, so I defaulted back here.

Actually, this second time boomeranging back, I realized Wisconsin isn't so bad of a place, after all. Gas prices are $0.50-0.60 cheaper, food is WAY cheaper, and the cold winters make spring and summer so much more meaningful; we actually have weather.


Nashville ;)


Same


Quite the spread. This is interesting as many HN submissions aren't locale specific.


I'm surprised to see that Hacker News has so many people from Georgia.


Anybody from Auburn, AL ?


Tuscaloosa. Roll Tide. :)


I grew up there, but I guess that doesn't count.


WOW. That count half :-)


1. California 2. New York 3. Texas 4. Washington 5. Massachusetts


As a ratio to population, Washington DC is #1, Washington State is #2. Go Washingtons.


I would not be surprised if the DC metro area is underrepresented in the tally because of people in or near the Beltway who vote Maryland and Virginia.

- DC native living in California, former Seattle resident.


You should add Canada


Canada is the United States' hat, not a state.

http://satwcomic.com/matter-of-perspective


It's only a model


So, completely change the poll?


And Mexico...


And the International Space Station.


If you consider Air Rights, the ISS would be in many, many, many states and countries. Besides, that poll will change up and down per region (if you managed to list all of them) every 90 minutes. The length of each orbit.


And England and France and Germany and Argentina and…

At the risk of sounding like an ass, adding other countries that are not states of the US seems to go against the initial question which says "If you are in the US…"

Puerto Rico might be a reasonable addition.


I'm the OP... I totally agree with you.


Maybe do a poll by country then.


Anyone in the north Idaho/east Washington region?


What is the tech scene like in Spokane? My family lives in Spokane and I visit a lot, but I can't imagine ever finding a decent job there.


I don't live there, but when I've eyeballed the craigslist ads, the job market is not strong. Certainly I don't think there's anything like a "scene". nbouscal may disagree though.


Go Cougs! (I live in NYC, but know Pullman well)


Spokane here.


SURPRISE SURPRISE - CALIFORNIA IS THE HIGHEST


Whassup my fellow Portlanders ? (go Oregon).


"denial" should also be an option :)


Go Oregon!

:)


As a psuedo-american, I think Oregon is the only state I could leave New Zealand for and stay relatively sane. Portland looks like a great town - wish there were more tech firms there!


There are quite a few (in portland at least) these days!

Far less than the valley I am sure, but there has been a decided uptick in the last few years. Tech scene here is shaping up nicely.


I lived in Christchurch for a while and there are definitely similarities. A kiwi friend, now in Ohio, is seriously considering a move out this way.


I'm impressed by our representation so far; a recent chart of HN job posts showed 0 results for us.


Maybe the last poll was on a sunny day. ;)


beautiful rio de janeiro :)


the results are going to be very predictable


Live in northern Virginia but voted DC since it's closer. I work in Maryland.


What point in Virginia is closer to DC than it is to Virginia?


It's a bit hard to explain if you're not from the DMV area. Most people who say they live in DC actually live in NoVA/MD. I'm in NoVA and voted Virginia, but I was tempted to vote DC as well.


I'm from Fairfax County, and my guess is that it will still be hard for you to explain to me how his location in Virginia is closer to DC than it is to Virginia.


Denial.


This is stupid. It will simply reflect the average number of people who have the internet per state.


It will absolutely not reflect the average number of people who have the internet per state.


Well, you're wrong about what it will reflect. But, even with that, if the purpose of the poll was to find that fact out, then the poll would not be stupid.

You can't know whether something is stupid without knowing the purpose behind it. You only know the question. You don't know the use to which the answer will be put.


The purpose was that I just wanted to know how many people are in my state that were on HN. But I decided to ask about all the states.


This comment is foolish; it reflects a lack of understanding that reading, let alone engaging in HN, is not evenly distributed across all demographics with internet access.


Upvote if you live in Silicon Valley


Downvote if you don't? :)




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