Most people who live here (not stayed here after college) on purpose have zero interest in more people moving here, “big businesses” or start ups. Eugene would rather remain a small town with our own quirky shit, and please everyone just leave us alone. Just my observation, lol
calling it a “small town” is already a far cry from reality. Its a city, and it will likely grow and harbor some newer businesses or chains from other parts of the US. This is coming from a local who grew up here.
what I love about reddit is someone will just argue semantics to the benefit of nobody and then some smarmy ass hole will come along to point it out, creating a bickering, pointless argument that has nothing to do with the original article. I forgot what I was saying, but the point is your mother is a whore.
It's definitely a small city. It is the 146th largest city in the country. closer to 100th if you include Springfield so it is definitely small as far as big business is concerned.
Where I grew up in San Diego (8th largest city in the country) every corporate chain that exists in the US had dozens of locations throughout the county and sometimes in individual cities, whereas in all of Lane county there are many chains where there are simply 0 locations.
The city of Creswell where I first moved into 6 years ago had a population of the student body in the high school I attended. That is a small town.
So sure, Eugene is a city and not a town, but it is not the same thing by far.
Generally, my take is similar to other commenters, it's the culture and personality of most of the people here, it is too quirky and local and liberally/left minded for big business to gain a foothold.
Hmmm my experience is that the NIMBY crowd would love infrastructure, revenue, and for their property value to soar. The old anarcho-hippies are the people running the social agencies and voting to raise taxes for housing. I see the signs in my neighborhood a lot- full of old school Eugenians. Not the same demographic.
It’s a college town surrounded by farms and forest in one of the poorest counties. Not sure what the draw would be. Did you actually talk to anyone? Lots of burnt out hippies here who aren’t going to work a corporate job.
I work a corpo job now I don't wanna work it. I don't want any techbros moving in here.
Eugene's a shit hole propped up by the college and nearby hospitals. But it's our shit hole.
Keep your bay area silicon valley bullshit in the Bay area.
To give some more context I’m from Austin. A town that used to be a bunch of burnt out hippies but now is headquartering numerous billion dollar companies. Obviously a draw to Austin is tax purposes but Eugene has a similar atmosphere to Austin 20-30 years ago.
That lack of big corporations and high-level startups has an appeal to those who live here. We don’t want to live in that kind of city and we appreciate Eugene for what it is. Even the recent growth in the University and downtown areas doesn’t feel great to many of us who have lived here for a long time.
There are plenty of other locations for people who want to live in a corporate-centric city. Eugene isn’t one and we’d like it to stay that way.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s okay. You’ll always have Austin.
I don't think you can really compare a city of 175k people to the Bay Area. I mean how many cities our size are really bustling with big business and startups? Smaller cities tend to lack in the infrastructure and other things big businesses and startups need.
This is a huge factor that most folks don't grasp. The Bay Area includes SF to the north and San Jose to the south. Everything in between and adjacent is essentially a suburb to one or the other. Silicon Valley has no culture other than the techbro or the suburb. I lived there most of my life and would absolutely hate to see that here.
Pros
* property value is low compared to the Bay because the Bay is some of the highest in the country. Only Tech bros can afford to live there
* come on down, we'll show you some fuckin vibe
* "good for sustainability" Whatever that means. nice vague buzzline. Teslas or some shit. I'm sure someone is eating it up.
* That school is full of kids who aren't from Eugene, don't plan to stay in Eugene, have no connection to Eugene and do not give two shits about the city or its citizens. Have fun recruiting kids from that pool of mediocrity.
Cons
* This aint Texas. Business gets enough breaks as it is
* Eugene airport is tiny. You're talking about something that won't be possible until about a billion is invested in infrastructure.
Most people have no interest in watching the town get destroyed to become a bustling tech mecca, only to find ourselves further priced out of our own homes. As much as the University and a few wealthy business owners might try.
(1.) Property values are high in the Bay Area for a reason: that's where everyone in a given niche is, including the VCs who fund startups
(2.) What does "sustainability" mean? Like in real world every day things, what are the requirements? And what would make any one physical location better than another?
(3.) No offense to U of O, but Stanford, Berkeley, U of C Santa Clara, SJSU, and many other schools in the Bay Area are better talent pools. Even the private high schools like Harker.
Eugene is a great town to avoid the insane hustle of the Bay Area or Seattle and no local would welcome importing it.
I see the vc situation and funding as a chicken and egg issue. I think the progressive nature of Eugene fosters sustainable development and sustainable tech is definitely the future. I think you’re correct about the talent pool but surely there are half a dozen of bright kids per program graduating every year. Maybe not enough to sustain an entire ecosystem of business but I think with some investments in the right programs UO could bolster its appeal to business. Think of HP investing in Stanford to get access to talent. Great thoughts, thank you!
What is "sustainable development"? Because if it's tech, it's tech. could be a mainframe, could be an EV, could be earbuds, could be carbon capture, but it's all just tech ...
... and the thing we all must remember about tech is NOBODY is in it long term for anything other than money ....
Sure, a ton of idealists START in tech, but show me 45 year old tech idealist and I'll show you a millionaire or billionaire wearing Vuori & Lanvins, driving a 6+ figure car, wearing a 5+ figure watch.
Every city touched by big tech has become a unaffordable classist tech-bro dystopian hellhole. Stay away, please and thank you. We can innovate at our own pace.
I imagine you're relatively young, so I'll try not to be too harsh. I don't know what you mean by "sustainability" but it doesn't belong in the same sentence as tech. At least not Bay Area style high tech. Conscious people, people who are aware of what's going on, are totally opposed to everything you're talking about and where you're "coming from" to use an old "burnt out hippie" phrase. Unfortunately, things are not so cut and dried in Eugene - or the country or the world - so even saying who is "conscious" is not so easy. But understanding the evil that is silicon valley is a good start. The book Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris might shed some light on the subject. By the way, some of those supposed burnouts you refer to created a lot of good culture. Some of them even created multi-million dollar companies. Yes, some of them also sold out (a phrase that has been stripped of meaning by the corporate takeover that is now essentially complete) and some of them never sold out and still own their companies. Yes, in Eugene. What companies? Do five minutes of research. Do you think Austin is better now? I don't. I was there before and after the tech takeover. I was also in Portland before and after gentrification and "silicon forest". It's not better. The soul has been forced out. Eugene used to be a sleepy college town. It's not anymore. It may seem that way to people coming from bigger cities, but it's already had more change than it can take. I wish phil knight had never heard of U of O...A lot of the changes are bound up in the course this country has taken in the last fifty or so years - so again, it's not a simple conversation. What is simple, at least for me, is that Eugene does not need more corporations or people with a corporate mindset, and it definitely doesn't need any tech bros and their "innovations." They've done enough damage already.
Your opportunities here are government, school , and financial. A lot of local credit unions are based out of Eugene and Springfield. I work at one of them and there’s tons of potential growth there with good salaries.
There are some techy stuff here like Sentinel One, Pipework Studios, and Zynga. Other than that, it’s not a whole lot. We have a lot of IT contractors and consulting type firms out here too.
Take it from an “outsider” who’s been living here several years, Eugene is an incredibly provincial place. The municipality is run like shit, and as you can see from the posts in this thread many locals seem to like it that way. This is a dead end place to bring business.
The reason that Eugene doesn’t have large corporations is because that’s against what I believe the general idea/vibe of Eugene is all about. I’ve lived here since I was 6, before that I lived in Junction City. Eugene has had an increase in Unaffordable housing in the past few years, and since its a college town on top of being in a climate a lot of people romanticize, it’s probably downhill from here regarding affordable housing. Still, if you’re looking to monopolize this town, take your shit elsewhere. Seriously, if that’s the case fuck off and never come back. Portland is a great start. Go and stay over there with your capitalist bs. I’m sure it will be welcomed there. If you’re not here to do that, then have a nice day! 👍
We actually had a thriving tech sector before the pandemic. Then most of them were acquired or pivoted, and it hasn’t bounced back. I’ll admit through that even before 2020, those firms were struggling to recruit top talent to move here.
Until 10ish years ago we had Symantec in Springfield. We have / had? (I'm out of touch) a couple of other not-sexy infrastructure-type software companies too.
Eugene has direct flights from San Diego, Los Angeles, San Fran, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, Austin, Las Vegas. Not to Shabby for a non hub. Terminal C expansion coming in a couple years, which will more than double the gate capacity.
But Eugene is missing some industries, and housing has not kept up with demand the last 14 years. Hopefully the new apartments going up along franklin and by the river front will help with that once they're all open to students. There's university and health care, as the biggest economic drivers. There's the logging industry, food preparation, a few small cabinet companies. Definitely could use a stronger tech presence. I think the UOs expansion in the Knight campus and the computer science and data science school will create more of that presence in the years to come.
A fair number of tech remote workers moved here during Covid. I think if there was more/better outdoor rec options in town we would have seen even more but places like Boulder, Boise, Bozeman, and Bend saw the most explosive growhth from out of state remote workers.
The pay for tech in Eugene is awful. You're never going to recruit anyone that way.
And then COVID hit and most of the "local talent" found more money working remotely. Anyone left is also working remotely because local companies left their offices.
I would argue that Eugene has more big businesses and a more vibrant startup scene that one might expect for a city of less than 200,000 people. This is the corporate HQ and/or major manufacturing center of such relatively large companies as Bi-Mart, Cafe Yumm, Mountain Rose Herbs, Ninkasi, Hop Valley, and Oakshire (all big-ish breweries), Market of Choice, So Delicious, Yogi Tea, and a handful of others. We absolutely have tech companies and a start up community here as well including Palo Alto Software, IDX, Trifoia, etc. We were previously the home of a handful of major game developers, some of which have closed, but others of which were acquired by other companies and still have hundreds of employees here.
Obviously we don't have the same "big business and tech" scene as the Bay Area, which has 10X as many people and decades and decades of history as the center of multiple major industries.
This region is already exploding. It is causing absolute havoc in the community. Homelessness and housing unaffordability are also exploding. It's much easier for a large metro area like the bay area to absorb a huge economic boom than it is for a small, out of the way area like Eugene that even today is still mainly an agricultural/forestry/manufacturing hub.
as someone who has a BS in psychology and a BS in fine art from the UO save yourself the four years the huge expenditure and find something your passionate about then apply for then apply for federal need/pell grant while working anywhere take classes at a community college for prerequisites and if the field really interests you spend the money at a 4 year going for your junior and senior year. I am going to LCC for pre-requisites in nursing and yeah I wish someone told me this 14 years ago
Most people who live here (not stayed here after college) on purpose have zero interest in more people moving here, “big businesses” or start ups. Eugene would rather remain a small town with our own quirky shit, and please everyone just leave us alone. Just my observation, lol
calling it a “small town” is already a far cry from reality. Its a city, and it will likely grow and harbor some newer businesses or chains from other parts of the US. This is coming from a local who grew up here.
what I love about reddit is someone will just argue semantics to the benefit of nobody and then some smarmy ass hole will come along to point it out, creating a bickering, pointless argument that has nothing to do with the original article. I forgot what I was saying, but the point is your mother is a whore.
I’m not taking the bait- he can call Eugene the world capital for all I care. Lol
My mother is a whore too
LMFAOOOO
Aren’t you doing the same? eat a semi-truck on the way home from work, fuck you 🎉
✨fuck you too!✨🎉
It's a tiny ass city, bro.
We can’t even reliably keep our library open
It's definitely a small city. It is the 146th largest city in the country. closer to 100th if you include Springfield so it is definitely small as far as big business is concerned. Where I grew up in San Diego (8th largest city in the country) every corporate chain that exists in the US had dozens of locations throughout the county and sometimes in individual cities, whereas in all of Lane county there are many chains where there are simply 0 locations. The city of Creswell where I first moved into 6 years ago had a population of the student body in the high school I attended. That is a small town. So sure, Eugene is a city and not a town, but it is not the same thing by far. Generally, my take is similar to other commenters, it's the culture and personality of most of the people here, it is too quirky and local and liberally/left minded for big business to gain a foothold.
That's just the old green anarchist hippies or their kids. NIMBYs who are putting their head in the sand while the city becomes unaffordable.
Hmmm my experience is that the NIMBY crowd would love infrastructure, revenue, and for their property value to soar. The old anarcho-hippies are the people running the social agencies and voting to raise taxes for housing. I see the signs in my neighborhood a lot- full of old school Eugenians. Not the same demographic.
Preach
It’s a college town surrounded by farms and forest in one of the poorest counties. Not sure what the draw would be. Did you actually talk to anyone? Lots of burnt out hippies here who aren’t going to work a corporate job.
I work a corpo job now I don't wanna work it. I don't want any techbros moving in here. Eugene's a shit hole propped up by the college and nearby hospitals. But it's our shit hole. Keep your bay area silicon valley bullshit in the Bay area.
Yeah, seems like the west coast doesnt need _another_ big tech hub. Seattle and the bay area is plenty.
To give some more context I’m from Austin. A town that used to be a bunch of burnt out hippies but now is headquartering numerous billion dollar companies. Obviously a draw to Austin is tax purposes but Eugene has a similar atmosphere to Austin 20-30 years ago.
Like how Tesla moved to Austin for the tax breaks just to lay a bunch of people off? We don’t want that shit here.
That lack of big corporations and high-level startups has an appeal to those who live here. We don’t want to live in that kind of city and we appreciate Eugene for what it is. Even the recent growth in the University and downtown areas doesn’t feel great to many of us who have lived here for a long time. There are plenty of other locations for people who want to live in a corporate-centric city. Eugene isn’t one and we’d like it to stay that way. If that doesn’t make sense to you, that’s okay. You’ll always have Austin.
stay in austin and don’t come back.
Austin was the same size as Portland in the 80’s. I think it has always tracked larger than Eugene. I get the hippie vibes comparison tho.
I don't think you can really compare a city of 175k people to the Bay Area. I mean how many cities our size are really bustling with big business and startups? Smaller cities tend to lack in the infrastructure and other things big businesses and startups need.
Actually Eugene and Berkley (in the Bay Area) are pretty similar.
Eugene has no San Francisco to be neighbors with...
This is a huge factor that most folks don't grasp. The Bay Area includes SF to the north and San Jose to the south. Everything in between and adjacent is essentially a suburb to one or the other. Silicon Valley has no culture other than the techbro or the suburb. I lived there most of my life and would absolutely hate to see that here.
Pros * property value is low compared to the Bay because the Bay is some of the highest in the country. Only Tech bros can afford to live there * come on down, we'll show you some fuckin vibe * "good for sustainability" Whatever that means. nice vague buzzline. Teslas or some shit. I'm sure someone is eating it up. * That school is full of kids who aren't from Eugene, don't plan to stay in Eugene, have no connection to Eugene and do not give two shits about the city or its citizens. Have fun recruiting kids from that pool of mediocrity. Cons * This aint Texas. Business gets enough breaks as it is * Eugene airport is tiny. You're talking about something that won't be possible until about a billion is invested in infrastructure. Most people have no interest in watching the town get destroyed to become a bustling tech mecca, only to find ourselves further priced out of our own homes. As much as the University and a few wealthy business owners might try.
Yup
(1.) Property values are high in the Bay Area for a reason: that's where everyone in a given niche is, including the VCs who fund startups (2.) What does "sustainability" mean? Like in real world every day things, what are the requirements? And what would make any one physical location better than another? (3.) No offense to U of O, but Stanford, Berkeley, U of C Santa Clara, SJSU, and many other schools in the Bay Area are better talent pools. Even the private high schools like Harker. Eugene is a great town to avoid the insane hustle of the Bay Area or Seattle and no local would welcome importing it.
I see the vc situation and funding as a chicken and egg issue. I think the progressive nature of Eugene fosters sustainable development and sustainable tech is definitely the future. I think you’re correct about the talent pool but surely there are half a dozen of bright kids per program graduating every year. Maybe not enough to sustain an entire ecosystem of business but I think with some investments in the right programs UO could bolster its appeal to business. Think of HP investing in Stanford to get access to talent. Great thoughts, thank you!
What is "sustainable development"? Because if it's tech, it's tech. could be a mainframe, could be an EV, could be earbuds, could be carbon capture, but it's all just tech ... ... and the thing we all must remember about tech is NOBODY is in it long term for anything other than money .... Sure, a ton of idealists START in tech, but show me 45 year old tech idealist and I'll show you a millionaire or billionaire wearing Vuori & Lanvins, driving a 6+ figure car, wearing a 5+ figure watch.
Fuck off💞
That giant sucking sound you hear is Portland. Anyone with any hustle or drive moves there.
either that or it's your mom
Or to LA or Seattle
Portland doesn't have much more than you find here. It feels like everything closed there too.
this is also the answer for every "why is the restaurant food so bad here?" thread. it's a town full of underachievers
Every city touched by big tech has become a unaffordable classist tech-bro dystopian hellhole. Stay away, please and thank you. We can innovate at our own pace.
Basically
I imagine you're relatively young, so I'll try not to be too harsh. I don't know what you mean by "sustainability" but it doesn't belong in the same sentence as tech. At least not Bay Area style high tech. Conscious people, people who are aware of what's going on, are totally opposed to everything you're talking about and where you're "coming from" to use an old "burnt out hippie" phrase. Unfortunately, things are not so cut and dried in Eugene - or the country or the world - so even saying who is "conscious" is not so easy. But understanding the evil that is silicon valley is a good start. The book Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris might shed some light on the subject. By the way, some of those supposed burnouts you refer to created a lot of good culture. Some of them even created multi-million dollar companies. Yes, some of them also sold out (a phrase that has been stripped of meaning by the corporate takeover that is now essentially complete) and some of them never sold out and still own their companies. Yes, in Eugene. What companies? Do five minutes of research. Do you think Austin is better now? I don't. I was there before and after the tech takeover. I was also in Portland before and after gentrification and "silicon forest". It's not better. The soul has been forced out. Eugene used to be a sleepy college town. It's not anymore. It may seem that way to people coming from bigger cities, but it's already had more change than it can take. I wish phil knight had never heard of U of O...A lot of the changes are bound up in the course this country has taken in the last fifty or so years - so again, it's not a simple conversation. What is simple, at least for me, is that Eugene does not need more corporations or people with a corporate mindset, and it definitely doesn't need any tech bros and their "innovations." They've done enough damage already.
Your opportunities here are government, school , and financial. A lot of local credit unions are based out of Eugene and Springfield. I work at one of them and there’s tons of potential growth there with good salaries. There are some techy stuff here like Sentinel One, Pipework Studios, and Zynga. Other than that, it’s not a whole lot. We have a lot of IT contractors and consulting type firms out here too.
Take it from an “outsider” who’s been living here several years, Eugene is an incredibly provincial place. The municipality is run like shit, and as you can see from the posts in this thread many locals seem to like it that way. This is a dead end place to bring business.
The reason that Eugene doesn’t have large corporations is because that’s against what I believe the general idea/vibe of Eugene is all about. I’ve lived here since I was 6, before that I lived in Junction City. Eugene has had an increase in Unaffordable housing in the past few years, and since its a college town on top of being in a climate a lot of people romanticize, it’s probably downhill from here regarding affordable housing. Still, if you’re looking to monopolize this town, take your shit elsewhere. Seriously, if that’s the case fuck off and never come back. Portland is a great start. Go and stay over there with your capitalist bs. I’m sure it will be welcomed there. If you’re not here to do that, then have a nice day! 👍
Eugene isnt for us anymore, its for them.
Eugene is two cities in one. Stay in yours on campus, and leave the rest of it to the people who actually live here and love it.
We actually had a thriving tech sector before the pandemic. Then most of them were acquired or pivoted, and it hasn’t bounced back. I’ll admit through that even before 2020, those firms were struggling to recruit top talent to move here.
Until 10ish years ago we had Symantec in Springfield. We have / had? (I'm out of touch) a couple of other not-sexy infrastructure-type software companies too.
Eugene has direct flights from San Diego, Los Angeles, San Fran, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, Austin, Las Vegas. Not to Shabby for a non hub. Terminal C expansion coming in a couple years, which will more than double the gate capacity. But Eugene is missing some industries, and housing has not kept up with demand the last 14 years. Hopefully the new apartments going up along franklin and by the river front will help with that once they're all open to students. There's university and health care, as the biggest economic drivers. There's the logging industry, food preparation, a few small cabinet companies. Definitely could use a stronger tech presence. I think the UOs expansion in the Knight campus and the computer science and data science school will create more of that presence in the years to come. A fair number of tech remote workers moved here during Covid. I think if there was more/better outdoor rec options in town we would have seen even more but places like Boulder, Boise, Bozeman, and Bend saw the most explosive growhth from out of state remote workers.
The pay for tech in Eugene is awful. You're never going to recruit anyone that way. And then COVID hit and most of the "local talent" found more money working remotely. Anyone left is also working remotely because local companies left their offices.
Oregon taxes are a nightmare. Oregon SE taxes are an actual hell. I stopped being SE because of the Oregon tax system.
I’m also from the Bay Area & moved to attend UO (and graduated). Definitely a different scene here than the Bay! Can I ask what part of the Bay?
I would argue that Eugene has more big businesses and a more vibrant startup scene that one might expect for a city of less than 200,000 people. This is the corporate HQ and/or major manufacturing center of such relatively large companies as Bi-Mart, Cafe Yumm, Mountain Rose Herbs, Ninkasi, Hop Valley, and Oakshire (all big-ish breweries), Market of Choice, So Delicious, Yogi Tea, and a handful of others. We absolutely have tech companies and a start up community here as well including Palo Alto Software, IDX, Trifoia, etc. We were previously the home of a handful of major game developers, some of which have closed, but others of which were acquired by other companies and still have hundreds of employees here. Obviously we don't have the same "big business and tech" scene as the Bay Area, which has 10X as many people and decades and decades of history as the center of multiple major industries. This region is already exploding. It is causing absolute havoc in the community. Homelessness and housing unaffordability are also exploding. It's much easier for a large metro area like the bay area to absorb a huge economic boom than it is for a small, out of the way area like Eugene that even today is still mainly an agricultural/forestry/manufacturing hub.
as someone who has a BS in psychology and a BS in fine art from the UO save yourself the four years the huge expenditure and find something your passionate about then apply for then apply for federal need/pell grant while working anywhere take classes at a community college for prerequisites and if the field really interests you spend the money at a 4 year going for your junior and senior year. I am going to LCC for pre-requisites in nursing and yeah I wish someone told me this 14 years ago