I moved from Cleveland to Seattle, and I would agree with most everything here (referring to Seattle of course). My only differences would be:
1) It is not as dirty. There is some level of dirtiness, but I found Cleveland to be much worse.
2) The government here isn't anywhere near as bad as SF or Cleveland. SF is NIMBY hell with a counter-intuitive positive feedback loop (They won't build, so they get gentrification, which oddly enough reduces their propensity to build), and a transit system that is so far gamed in the Transit Union's advantage that it has stopped functioning for society. Cleveland is playing the bribe-the-fortune-500 game with tax breaks that they can't afford, and city services which are mismanaged and underfunded.
Seattle has a nimby problem, a noise problem, and their public transportation is pretty weak and poorly designed. But I love it here.
+1 for Seattle. For the outdoor oriented tech types Seattle is the place to be. The access to amazing skiing, hiking, climbing, boating, mountain biking from Seattle cannot be beat. You can work until 5:30 and be skiing powder at Alpental at 6:30. In the summer you can access world class sport, trad or bouldering after work, or you can shuttle awesome MTB trails.
I was in SF a couple of days this year and one of the biggest things that I noticed during my short visit is how clean everything seemed compared to Cleveland.
I was only in the downtown area, but even if only comparing downtown Cleveland there is still a huge difference.
1) It is not as dirty. There is some level of dirtiness, but I found Cleveland to be much worse.
2) The government here isn't anywhere near as bad as SF or Cleveland. SF is NIMBY hell with a counter-intuitive positive feedback loop (They won't build, so they get gentrification, which oddly enough reduces their propensity to build), and a transit system that is so far gamed in the Transit Union's advantage that it has stopped functioning for society. Cleveland is playing the bribe-the-fortune-500 game with tax breaks that they can't afford, and city services which are mismanaged and underfunded.
Seattle has a nimby problem, a noise problem, and their public transportation is pretty weak and poorly designed. But I love it here.