I love it, but that's sort of because it's not a real tech scene. I was in SF for five years before moving back to STL and while I love the city, the tech culture kind of wore on me. Things are a bit less like an echo chamber here I think.
St. Louis has a tech community, but it's pretty small, and there aren't very many people who have already experienced success. As a result, while there are a lot of the normal startup things like co-working spaces, networking events, etc., it isn't a particularly big part of life unless you really want it to be. It's easy to meet people who work in other industries, and I think people generally don't link their personal identity to their employer as much. I also think more people find satisfaction in non-tech work (like customer service, teaching, etc.). I consider this to be a more healthy and hopefully sustainable environment.
Having said that, it's a bit funny because many people in the tech scene here haven't experienced the Bay Area and they think STL is sort of "the next silicon valley" which is just so hilariously not true. I view that as a good thing because I left SF for a reason, but I do wish people would stop pretending that it's a first-class tech hub. It's just a great mid-sized city with roughly the same number of tech jobs as any other mid-sized city.
St. Louis has a tech community, but it's pretty small, and there aren't very many people who have already experienced success. As a result, while there are a lot of the normal startup things like co-working spaces, networking events, etc., it isn't a particularly big part of life unless you really want it to be. It's easy to meet people who work in other industries, and I think people generally don't link their personal identity to their employer as much. I also think more people find satisfaction in non-tech work (like customer service, teaching, etc.). I consider this to be a more healthy and hopefully sustainable environment.
Having said that, it's a bit funny because many people in the tech scene here haven't experienced the Bay Area and they think STL is sort of "the next silicon valley" which is just so hilariously not true. I view that as a good thing because I left SF for a reason, but I do wish people would stop pretending that it's a first-class tech hub. It's just a great mid-sized city with roughly the same number of tech jobs as any other mid-sized city.