Seattle has never been particularly welcoming to newcomers; people there tend to be insular and it can be hard to make friends if you don&#x27;t already know people (even before the amazon&#x2F;tech stuff -- plenty of articles about &#x27;the seattle freeze&#x27; that predate it). Being from there helps. Not being in tech helps -- there are so many new software engineers meeting one just isn&#x27;t very interesting. You can hardly blame people; if every single new person you meet is a software engineer you get real sick of hearing that real fast. You appear like you&#x27;re a dime a dozen, because as a software engineer transplant in Seattle you are and to anyone not in tech your work is utterly boring; if you can, try talking about hobbies instead and avoiding talking about work entirely. That might help, but it&#x27;s definitely an uphill battle in that city.<p>Also everyone hates amazon. So if you don&#x27;t work there, be outwardly and explicitly proud that you don&#x27;t -- that&#x27;s a huge selling point when it comes to making friends. Partly because of the white collar sweatshops (people in seattle generally liberal and pro-labor), partly because of the blue-collar sweatshops, partly because &#x27;large corporation = evil&#x27;, partly because the countless new techbros with no respect for Seattle culture who spend 11hrs&#x2F;day at work and don&#x27;t have time to develop a personality romping around town give it a real bad reputation.