Depends on your cost/time tradeoff.

Manhattan is extremely walkable. If you live close to where your office is, you might be spending 10 minutes commuting each way (including elevators in both buildings). That's rather short, but not unheard of in NYC. However, it might be more expensive.

If you (say) work in Chelsea and live in deep Brooklyn, you'll have 40 minutes commute each direction each day, and that would save you some $1000/month on rent. Some people would rather pay that money than spend that time daily.

Jersey City and hoboken are, in many senses, close than Brooklyn or Queens, definitely closer than Long Island City. The commute is not bad at all, as long as you find a place close to a PATH station, and your office is walkable from a PATH station (if you need to switch between the PATH and the subway, you'll have a much longer and more expensive commute).

Don't immediately discard manhattan - there are good deals to be found, and brooklyn is not as cheap as it was five years ago.

Finally, if that's feasible, I'd recommend finding a one month rental (airbnb / sublets on craigslist, corporate housing / long stay hotel if you can afford it) close to your office BEFORE you commit; that would let you get a better idea of what you need and what's your cost/benefit tradeoff. Basically all reasonably priced nice apartments in NYC are yearly contracts, and many owners will not let you out easily if you want to leave earlier than that.

Do you realise that Long Island City is basically the bit of Queens that is closest to midtown Manhattan? I suspect that you're a little confused. Long Island City is close and well connected to Manhattan.

Just a clarification :).

Oops, I was thinking of Long Island rather than Long Island City. Thanks for the correction.

Where do you think your job will be? On manhattan or off?

Lower manhattan is really expensive, but upper manhattan is actually remarkably affordable (for NYC). You can actually find prices comparable to brooklyn or queens if you go up far enough. I'd look for something in washington heights or harlem if you have work on manhattan somewhere.

Staten Island is a dump and so is Jersey. I've had friends try to live in Jersey City and etc before and while it is a bit cheaper, you lose all of that money when you factor in the extra transport costs of having to buy transit in two states from two different systems. It's also a huge pain to get to manhattan from there and you'll lose a lot of time in transit.

The main thing is to get an apartment near a subway stop if at all possible. It will make your life SO much easier.

I might actually be moving to NYC next year to finish my degree, so hopefully if there is a hacker scene there, I'll be able to find it and integrate smoothly. The midwest really sucks for this sort of thing, and with a city the size of NYC, there's got to be at least SOME cool tech inclined people. Just a matter of finding them, I'm sure.

If you ever want to get together, grab a drink, and hack on something then definitely drop me a line in my email.

I spent a week in August in a hostel around Long Island City. It took ~10 minutes by subway to get to Midtown, another 15 or so to get anywhere else in Manhattan. The main drawback is that you can't easily walk there - you have to go across the Queensboro Bridge. Walking back to LIC late at night is much more of a hassle than walking back to say, LES or Hell's Kitchen.

The border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights around Franklin Ave. might be a good fit for you. It is relatively affordable, somewhat close to Prospect Park, and around some cool places.

Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are really wonderful neighborhoods. It is a bit more expensive, but you can stumble upon some "gems" from time to time.

Best wishes and welcome! :-)

Any knowledge of what the hacker scene is like? I'm not expecting a tech mecca like Palo Alto but it'd be nice if there were some workspaces or meetup groups in the area.

I really do love NYC (I'm at school about 90 mins away and have plenty of friends living there) and want to do everything I can to make it a hacker's paradise.

the public transportation in NYC is great. Finding great cheap apts is like finding a needle in a haystack. Some friends are reading obituaries to find vacant apts. Everything is available within 1 hr commute via public transportation. I would look at a 30-45 minutes commute from your work location. Look at L magazine and Time Out New York and see where your interests are located. Some of the more affordable places are upper manhattan, the upper east side of manhattan and the outskirts of brooklyn and queens. Even Staten Island for some and if your a real homesteader there are some areas in the South Bronx which are getting cool, although very slowly.

Don't overlook Hoboken, Jersey City etc, even though they are technically in a different state