If you want an A+ career in technology, move to the Bay Area

Having had several offers to relocate to the Bay Area all I can really say is that almost nobody pays well enough to make it worthwhile. You can make $150k-200k in Seattle, Portland, Denver, Austin, etc. and work on some really interesting problems with marketplace leaders (often even for companies based in the Bay Area). You end up living like a king comparatively. You'd have to make at least 30-40% more than that in the Bay Area just to maintain a lateral quality of life.

Having now screened over 300 candidates for openings on my team, the overwhelming majority of them being people already in the Bay Area, about the only thing I can say is that with all the easy money sloshing around the economy there it's just way, waaaaaaay to easy to be a terrible engineer and still maintain being a highly paid "professional". Most of the people I screen/interview are advanced-IDE users at best or simply framework operators (i.e. they have no idea how the things even work that they're claiming to be experts in).

Sure there are a lot of bright folks too (law of averages and all that), but it's depressing to see what people are getting paid to do glorified web scripting or whose entire job function could be replaced with 50-lines of Bash.

Since the comments thus far are quite inflammatory -- which I find odd, considering this is a subject almost all of us most have thought about -- I'll throw in my $0.02.

I am an ex-finance guy (who has programmed computers forever) who recently quit "the business" and moved to SF to work at a startup. This gives me some perspective.

I can say a few things for sure. First, there are more tech-related opportunities here. You just can't deny it -- once you're in it, you see it. Everybody everywhere is talking about tech... all the time. It's like going to the bar outside Goldman. Everyone's talking about the stock/bond/FX/whatever market or the topic du jour.

Similarly, getting a true finance job outside the greater NY area would be extremely difficult. The main reason for this is because in places like California, you mostly find either a.) satellite offices of big firms, which are no good for a young person, or b.) hedge funds on the beach with two guys and a dog (no room for a young person). So I can say for NY, the point rings true.

In terms of tech in SF, being in the hub seems to matter -- if you're making some kind of career move. I can tell you for certain I've been getting more job hits (from tech firms) living out here. When I lived in NY, the only one who'd interview me was Google -- first at the NY office, then in Mountain View, for a position in San Bruno. It was very difficult to make the horizontal shift directly from Wall Street to tech -- for geographic and cultural reasons.

But the real "blame" I'd like to place is on automatic screening mechanisms. All too often I've been screened out of candidacy at smaller companies because it's just too much effort to fly out a candidate for an interview, put them up at a hotel with a car, all so you can (maybe) hire them and have to pay relocation. Not many companies are willing to do that... it's just life.

That said, people who are driven and committed will (I believe) have A+ careers (in a much more liberal sense of the term than used here) regardless of where they live. But, if a particular goal has your attention -- go where the fish are biting. There's nothing about that that doesn't make sense to me.

PS - on the flip-side, I once worked for a big bank headquartered in L.A. I elected not to move there for exactly these reasons -- I don't want to be an actor, so I stayed in NY. But when I wanted to horizontal into true-pure-tech, I did make a point to get myself to SF, whatever it took.

There is one possible flaw in this - if you have to struggle to pay the rent, you may not be able to focus on the creative work that would lead to a truly magnificent career.

The bay area,does have a huge tech industry, and Ms. Laakerman has accurately described how the scale of tech in the bay area may allow greater specialization and the career boost it can provide.

However, I think this may miss the kind of creative rndeavor software can be. Software allows you to pay the bills and live in SF, sort of, but are you the same kind of programmer you'd be if you didn't have to make choices based on making rent?

Lower rent doesn't just mean you have the option of working less, hanging out with friends, spending time with family (though that is a fine way to spend it). It can also allow you to work just as hard but differently, on a path you can choose, before people with money even understand what it is let alone if they should fund it (and when they to the might fight it rather then fund it).

I really do think that for some people, staying away from the sky high cost of living may be essential to creating the half formed idea that turns into something incredible.

> "he doesn't work too hard"

This is desirable.

It's not surprising that this person is a "Founder/CEO" and her definition of "A+" is "working hard". But she'll give you some worthless stock options!

I thought about this some, and I would probably agree with this statement. As an analogy, though it's possible to be a star through YouTube from anywhere in the country, to get the best gigs, you'll probably have to move to Los Angeles.

But, I couldn't help but think what Taleb would think about a person going great lengths just to have an "A+ career" and potentially fragile one with a single firm. If this person's career is currently B+, yet they have great control of their day to day lives and quality of it, it'd be foolish to try to fulfill this goal.

This is a comically myopic viewpoint, bordering on offensive to those of us who live in the (very large) world outside of Silicon Valley.

There are some really amazing places and people out there. You can have an excellent life and career without ever travelling to California. Or even the USA! I don't buy the letter grade rhetoric at all.

Odd that a recruiter writes an article claiming that where she works to recruit is where the talent should move to as well.

#NotSuspect

As if everybody has that option.