Can anyone recommend the State of Washington?

[Evildeadmanwalking77]

My wife and I interested in moving there, probably either Seattle, Tacoma, or Olympia. I was just curious how these areas or any areas in Washington are as far as job market, safety, taxes, cost of living in general, etc. I'm looking to eventually get into the video game industry as well so I want to be closer to some of the companies, design schools, etc and I also believe Nintendo has a headquarters in Washington state? I appreciate anyone's input on this. Thanks!

[Bradtemple87]

I have visited a couple times. I say go for it, it's beautiful up there. Seattle is bound to have some jobs. I hope you like the rain

[fvgazi]

Twin Peaks!

[avrame]

Hey there, as a local Washingtonian I would say that you have a pretty good chance of finding a job up here assuming your resume fills out well. The majority of the company's up here are bigtime software companies, such as Microsoft, Nintendo and Amazon. The constantly have openings available, and if your degree matches with that field, you have a good chance of landing the job if you have prior experience in that field.

Now, keep in mind that right in Seattle is the University of Washington. Around now, many of the near/recent graduates are looking for jobs in the same areas as you may plan to, but the easiest way to get a foot up on them is to have past work experience in your field of choice.

As for living conditions, you have three great areas to live up here, being Newcastle, Bellevue and Mercer Island. Though great to the eyes and nice communities, they are easily in the higher pricing bracket for homes. For the middle pricing, you can look for homes in Seattle, Bothell, Lynnwood, Kirkland, Woodinville and Renton. All of them are nearby to the main state Highways/Innerstates (I-5, I-405, 520, I-90), so you could commute or ride the transit depending on your preference.

If you wish to get the most bang for your buck, but deal with a hellish commute, you could live south in the Kent area. I have plenty of family that lives down there, easily grabbing large houses for medium house in the Seattle area ($350-400k-ish), but they deal with an easily 1-1.5 hour ONE-WAY commute a day.

If you are looking for an apartment or condo, those area pretty easy to find all around here. I would suggest taking a glance at redfin.com

[MrPopo]

I moved out here to Seattle to work at Amazon almost 4 years ago. There are a lot of tech companies out here, both business and games. Off the top of my head there's Amazon, Microsoft, a Google office, Real Networks, Oracle, Cisco, Valve, Nintendo, ArenaNet and Uber Entertainment. If you're looking to get into the tech industry then you want to move to the Seattle area; Tacoma and Olympia are further out. There's no state income tax, but sales tax runs about 9-10%. Cost of living is also fairly high out here, and real estate is expensive. But it's an amazing place to be.

[J T]

I live in the Seattle area. I love it here. There is a ton of stuff to do here. Every form of entertainment you can think of is easily available here. Lots of great music. There is a lot of variety in restaurants with a lot of good food. There are parks everywhere. If you have kids, some areas have really good school systems (like Shoreline), although I would probably avoid Seattle itself for that.


Yes, many of the big name game developers are out here. Valve (Half Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal) and Bungie (Halo, Marathon) are within about 2 blocks of each other over in Bellevue. ArenaNet (Guild Wars) is also in Bellevue as is Sucker Punch Studios (Sly Cooper).

Microsoft Games studios is in Redmond. Nintendo has a headquarters in Redmond too. Big Fish is here somewhere. They sell a lot of casual games. Gas Powered Games (Supreme Commander, Dungeon Siege) is in Redmond.

Pop Cap Games (Bejeweled, Plants VS Zombies, Peggle) is in Seattle. Surreal Software is in Seattle (The Suffering).

There are also a lot of smaller companies too scattered throughout the state. I don't know if any of these places are looking to hire, but it's definitely a good area to be in because there are so many places where you could potentially get hired. Just as a job tip, I recently read somewhere that Gabe Newell of Valve said that the number one thing that they look for from somebody at Valve above degrees or anything else is that they show past evidence of being able to create something with a built-in method for receiving feedback about it that they then use to improve the creation. I imagine that would be true of other places too. They want to see that you can create, seek feedback, and adapt to that feedback quickly to improve your product.


Cost of living can be pretty high, but there are definitely affordable pockets everywhere. We don't have income tax here, so that should cut you a bit of a break, but rent/mortgage will likely be expensive as will other costs. A few years back Seattle was high up in a top 10 list of the most expensive places to live in the country. I don't think it's as bad as New York or San Francisco though.

[MrPopo]

I live in the Seattle area. I love it here. There is a ton of stuff to do here. Every form of entertainment you can think of is easily available here. Lots of great music. There is a lot of variety in restaurants with a lot of good food. There are parks everywhere. If you have kids, some areas have really good school systems (like Shoreline), although I would probably avoid Seattle itself for that.

Yeah, you can get amazing pho and sushi out here, and there's a bunch of other really good restaurants. Shoreline's nice because you get a district almost as good as Bellevue but at a much more reasonable price.

[Evildeadmanwalking77]

I live in the Seattle area. I love it here. There is a ton of stuff to do here. Every form of entertainment you can think of is easily available here. Lots of great music. There is a lot of variety in restaurants with a lot of good food. There are parks everywhere. If you have kids, some areas have really good school systems (like Shoreline), although I would probably avoid Seattle itself for that.


Yes, many of the big name game developers are out here. Valve (Half Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal) and Bungie (Halo, Marathon) are within about 2 blocks of each other over in Bellevue. ArenaNet (Guild Wars) is also in Bellevue as is Sucker Punch Studios (Sly Cooper).

Microsoft Games studios is in Redmond. Nintendo has a headquarters in Redmond too. Big Fish is here somewhere. They sell a lot of casual games. Gas Powered Games (Supreme Commander, Dungeon Siege) is in Redmond.

Pop Cap Games (Bejeweled, Plants VS Zombies, Peggle) is in Seattle. Surreal Software is in Seattle (The Suffering).

There are also a lot of smaller companies too scattered throughout the state. I don't know if any of these places are looking to hire, but it's definitely a good area to be in because there are so many places where you could potentially get hired. Just as a job tip, I recently read somewhere that Gabe Newell of Valve said that the number one thing that they look for from somebody at Valve above degrees or anything else is that they show past evidence of being able to create something with a built-in method for receiving feedback about it that they then use to improve the creation. I imagine that would be true of other places too. They want to see that you can create, seek feedback, and adapt to that feedback quickly to improve your product.


Cost of living can be pretty high, but there are definitely affordable pockets everywhere. We don't have income tax here, so that should cut you a bit of a break, but rent/mortgage will likely be expensive as will other costs. A few years back Seattle was high up in a top 10 list of the most expensive places to live in the country. I don't think it's as bad as New York or San Francisco though.

No, trust me man, ANYTHING is better than NY right now! That's where I have been for the past 34 years and I want out, as does my wife. We are probably going to visit Seattle in the summer to get a feel for things. Washington looks like a beautiful state in general but we want to make sure we can be financially secure and if we decide on children that we are in a safe location with low crime rate. I don't expect it to be perfect because nothing is but I just want my family to be safe & secure which is what anybody would want. It's going to be a BIG move for us going to the other side of the country to start a new life but sometimes it's just what you need to do. Thanks guys! This certainly helps and I'm feeling a little bit better about it.

[Stark]

Man we have a lot of Racketboy'ers up here. I'm about 35 miles North of Seattle and I really like it here. I commute down South, but have a carpool so it's not too bad. There's plenty of retro gaming stores here too! As Brad says above "hope you like rain", I'll add "hope you don't mind a bunch of liberals and granola munchers".

[J T]

It's true. I will confirm that I am indeed liberal and I do like granola.