Especially amazing considering that he moved from Palo Alto to Austin. Did all his friends move too?

My junior high friends that I've been having parties with for 30 years live in Minneapolis (where I grew up). They fly out for New Year's Eve each year.

But, in fact, some friends who regularly attended LAN parties in the Bay Area moved to Austin around the same time we did. And some others are also willing to travel for New Year's.

(Most parties are just local people, of course.)

Plenty of people in tech moved from Silicon Valley to Austin to get a better tax / quality of life deal, even in my social circle. Remote working becoming widely available really made a difference.

I'm in a completely different part of the world, but for similar reasons I ended up with a few friends in tech who moved to the same part of the world - and I've also met similar profiles to ours, attracted by the same reasons.