Lived in the area for many years. I really liked it overall. Housing is about half the cost of San Diego. Great tax situation if you live and work just over the river in WA (no state income tax in WA, no sales tax in OR). Friendly place, some beautiful, open spaces, Portland is a good size town so there’s stuff to do, and Seattle is just 2.5 hours north if you need a really big city.
The biggest negative is the weather if you’re comparing it to San Diego. The rain starts sometime in October and doesn’t really finish up until June. If it’s not raining it’s still probably cloudy and gray. Lots of people have those light boxes to combat SAD. July, August, and the first part of September are usually fantastic. It might snow once a year, but it’s not a big deal. The city kind of slows down for a day or two. Ice storms, which happen every couple of years, are a bigger deal and completely shut every thing down.
The other big negative is that the job situation there is very poor if you’re a technical person. I can’t speak to other professions, but in engineering there’s just not much. Of the decent paying jobs it’s basically Intel. HP (in WA across the river) used to be a big presence, but not any more. Tektronix is a shadow of its former self. You pretty quickly get down to jobs that pay 60-70% of what a HP/Intel job would pay. When you do the math the fact that housing is less doesn’t make up for the massive pay cut.
