Tech workers think Silicon Valley and startups are losing their luster

I spent seven years in the Bay area, and found it quite a questionable deal. Not that it was a bad place per se, but it was expensive and the stuff I was doing just wasn't very special.

My sense is that if you are going to go to the Bay area, and put up with those high high costs for everything, you need to make it pay. Spend your weekends doing unusual stuff that you can't do elsewhere. Take jobs that don't exist elsewhere. And if that doesn't sound like your thing, don't go there in the first place.

A huge problem in my opinion, is employee equity and compensation. No doubt, VCs are risking their money. But when you look at the system taking a few steps back, you see tons of VCs have made insane mounts of money in the last decade. Enough to buy castles, sports teams, and their own private islands.

Then you look at the swaths of tech workers who were there at the early stage. I've seen multiple large exits in startups. Places I've worked at or have had close friends. People who were there at the seed stage with barely a MVP, who built products, pulled all-nighters, and worked 7 days a week. Upon acquisition, the VCs made 10s of millions, the founders made 10s of millions and the employees got new car money (for 2 years of intense work getting paid well below market).

EDIT: Another interesting point that is a bit too off-topic and lengthy for this comment is that most startups simply don't realize the value of (5+)x engineers. I've worked with people that are astronomically more efficient than entry or mid-level engineers who make 100-130K, yet they make around the same amount. Its very worth it to find these people and pay them 2-3x market and retain them. I'm not talking about algorithms wizards (although these people tend to be decent algorists too), I'm speaking of engineers who can work on all levels of the stack and ship code that is simple and works. They understand business needs and don't get caught up in self-gratifying projects. They use a mix of new and old tools, selecting them for reliability and efficiency.

    > “There is more opportunity for tech professionals in more places than ever before,”
    >  wrote Terence Chiu, vice president of Indeed Prime by email, citing cities such as
    > Austin, Boston, Seattle, and New York City.

Or simply from home. I've been working from home the last year, doing coding for a startup idea (for others, not my own project).

Seriously, in the age of the Internet, and of looong traffic jams on 101 and on the various Bay bridges, if an employer insists every programmer has to hang around in that area something is off in their thinking. As someone who did hang around there (during the dot com boom), at several companies and visiting many more as part of the job, it is overrated, especially for programmers. Sure it's better to be around the coworkers everything else being equal - but everything else is not equal. The costs of doing so (not just monetary) is very high.

It's a beautiful area alright, I lived in the Presidio at the end (that's the huge park right next to the Golden Gate bridge), perfect. But not all people can live in the same place... (PS: By the way, the East Bay has great places too! The Oakland hills near the top, for tens of miles, have some of the most beautifully located properties in the entire Bay Area. Plus endless parks and trails and horse riding, etc., not to mention the incredible views. And in Oakland visit Jack London Square and then walk downtown.)

I don't know what's meant by "tech workers" but as a programmer I can't really think of a better place with more jobs, more events, more everything that matters. All my former coworkers and friends live here. There are meetups all the time. I don't see how it's losing its luster. Yes it's expensive, but I BART in from a place with cheaper housing costs. I don't have to live in downtown SF to work there.

Silicon Valley hasn't released a blockbuster app, website or company in a while. Particularly social media companies that upend the rest of the world and the way it functions. The directly consumer facing / social companies really move perception versus other companies that don't interact with the general public. There was also the iPhone 2007 which changed the way the entire world used their phones, and a lot of fallout change with it. I think the media attention seems to have lulled a bit since there haven't been what I'll call blockbuster techs in a while; e.g., some large consumer facing company that changes people's lifestyles. So maybe the glamour is missing. The amount of attention SV received a few years ago seemed to be bigger, with everyone eagerly awaiting new life changing tech that is as obvious as the iPhone, FB, Instagram, YouTube or other very consumer facing and widely used consumer companies.

Seems like Uber and Snapchat were the last game changing companies for how people interact with the world via tech on a large scale. IMO it's lack of media attention, excitement and companies that are very obvious lifestyle changers.

Note that there may be a strong selection bias here, as not many "top engineers" in the Bay Area use Indeed.

Indeed, Indeed seems to attract the kind of engineers most likely to give the kinds of responses seen in their survey, like preferring large established brands over startups.

This is less likely (in my opinion) to indicate a shift in engineer preferences than it is to reveal the skew of Indeed's userbase.

Disclaimer: I work at Hired, a direct competitor to Indeed Prime, and live/work in SF. (Also note that although our customers often use competitors, they typically cite Indeed Prime as less effective for startup talent than much smaller competitors).

My problems of lonliness and depression went away after I left the bay. It's important that I'm not there. I've seen this happen to others as well.

These articles seem to be a dime a dozen; always predicting the demise of SV. But SV is to tech as Wall St is to finance and that's not going to change for either of these places anytime soon. A key advantage of SV for me has been great career mobility while being able to set down roots. I've been able to push my career forward by working at different industry leading companies without having to move. This allows my family life to be really stable which is the most important thing to me. I really believe I probably could not have a acheived that anywhere else.

I couldn't be more happy working remote and living abroad now. I have zero desire to go to the bay area. I earn as much as I would back there. But I live in a WAY cheaper city.

What people seem to miss when they project about Silicon Valley's future is that how existing tech monopolies are becoming increasingly profitable. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Netflix are all literally killing it! If you want to grow your career in any of these big tech companies you have to be in the Bay Area (Seattle for Microsoft or Amazon depending on what part of the company).

I love visiting the bay area and there there is no disputing there are a lot of engineering jobs there and probably always will be but for a lot of people the cost of living and in particular housing makes working there a raw deal. It really only makes sense if you are just out of school and can move up the ranks quickly or if you have notoriety and can command salary over $200k per year. For the average mid to late career engineer who is going to get an offer in the $130k - $150k range it doesn't make financial sense.

My thought exactly.Silicon Valley is still top spots for tech hunter, but it is not irreplaceable.

As to the startup thing. The tech bubble hasn't burst, yet. But valuation of startups, big or small, are already taking hits, which means a large chuck of employees' potential salary have evaporated. I would predict that startups are going to have a hard time attracting the best talents out there, on the other hand, they might retreat their appetite for expansion since the growth is slowing.

Wait, since when have technology workers thought that Silicon Valley was lustrous? The media certainly paints things that way but anyone on the ground floor knows it is anything but. Legacy technology stacks, a revolving door of programmers and managers, incoherent product roadmaps, long hours, shady backroom no-poaching deals, etc.

I mean what sane person thinks any of that is good?

With what demographic? They mention ages, but I can think of other things as well.

Maybe its because I have a good job that affords me some freedom, but as a married man soon welcoming a baby, Silicon Valley holds no appeal for me - but then again, tech isn't my life, it's only a portion.

Factors in that statement include cost of living and commute times - both low for me in the Utah Valley.

It probably really does matter that I hate commuting and I'd like a yard.

To each their own. When I read such articles I wonder what the motivation is?

Clearly the Bay area, whether you like it or not, is a phenomenal place which has stayed at the top of the tech pyramid since it's inception as "Silicon Valley". It's expensive, people work crazy hours, tech bubble, housing bubble, traffic, bad infrastructure etc. But there's a reason why most major technological developments happen here and not elsewhere.

I'm not advocating that this is a place that everyone would enjoy living, but bashing it for it's negatives and completely ignoring the obvious positives, is IMO disingenuous.

I recently moved to the Bay from Chicago and work at a startup. I had always dreamed about moving to SV and I love working for a startup and seeing startups and famous tech companies emblazoned on buildings around me; but, sometimes I feel like everything is dead. Like am I missing something in the south bay? It seems like not much is happening. Maybe I'm just not used to suburban living but it doesn't feel like the buzzing place I imagined.

Most of these tech companies are derivative, there are only a few that are truly innovative that actually results in productivity gains. Most of these derivative tech companies look for incremental improvements for some minor gain in efficiency or effectiveness for the frivolous chase of increasing their total equity value with an entire industry that supports and feeds off this drivel.

I think a lot of mid-level to senior-level developers are starting to realize you can net a lot more and have a better quality of life outside of the bay area.

The low interest in working for startups is also telling imo. Could that be because there isn't a lot of exciting startups currently or is it that developers are looking for more stability?

I feel if you haven't figured out where "home" is, you would be a lot more open to the idea of moving. But as soon as you add family to the mix, "home" becomes more defined.

When you're younger, you switch jobs a lot more often to figure out what you want to do and to try something new. I wouldn't be surprised if that extended into moving more often. E.g. I want to try city living, then suburb living, etc.

Funny thing about the Bay Area, though, is that it can get hard to move around because if you've lived here for more than a couple years, you are now renting or owning a place so cheap (in comparison to market prices) that you can't justify moving.

Silicon Valley is great for growing tech. If you want stability, may as well work for a large tech company somewhere cheaper. (Though IBM has proven than stability is illusory) It's also getting to be very expensive for "2 people in a garage". Where Silicon Valley excels is hyper growth.

Try scaling to 100+ engineers in Pittsburgh or Chicago. Try meeting VCs daily I between Series B and C. It's harder everywhere else than in Silicon Valley.

The area also has an energy that comes from high energy educated transplants that is hard to replicate. I've seen it in New York but not as much elsewhere in the US.

I've always wanted to live in the Bay Area, I moved here without any plans to work in tech, and only ended up doing it because it's the best deal being offered.

If you live here and you're anywhere in this thread complaining about how it's overrated and you hate having to be here for work, please, get out. Now. My friends and neighbors are struggling to be in this place for lots of reasons you're oblivious to, precisely because there are so many people who actually hate it here but feel they have to be here for work.

You're not doing yourself or anyone else any favors by staying here. Move. Please.

The survey findings have to be taken with a grain of salt - one year of data from one site, and no mention of trying to find a representative sample.

San Francisco is beautiful except for the city.

More seriously, I've half-thought about moving to the West Coast from the East Coast a number of times. For jobs, the Bay Area takes the cake...but for remote work, there's other places along the coast that aren't cities and are delightfully pleasant -- nobody ever seems to talk about Monterrey for example.

For those of you in Seattle, what are your thoughts on the Seattle Freeze?

a) San Francisco would look like Detroit if it wasn't for the tech industry. Still is the peninsula's largest camping ground.

b) The idea that "tech" is the pinnacle of social status and the industry to disdain over inequality is laughable at best, even if it is true in that area. Being "in tech" flies so far under the radar in New York City and people in that industry earn the same amounts as in SF.

c) The infrastructure in Silicon Valley is laughable. Many startups trying to "change the world" look at the world through a lens of what doesn't function well in Silicon Valley. When the rest of the world, or the addressable market, already has an adequate solution to a problem the Stanford Grad and their Sand Hill neighbors thinks exists. (Random example: Many gas stations on the peninsula don't take credit cards, for reference. Cellular internet speeds on Verizon, T-Mobile, At&t, and Google Fi are pretty slow, startups are still working on clever WIFI solutions not realizing that the rest of the country has cellular data faster than Silicon Valley's wifi)

As someone who loves living in SF, this is a promising trend!

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I spent 15 years in the bay area, and finally burned out on it and moved abroad for a happier, less stressful life. My experience with the complaints of the bay differ a lot, primarily because of a difference of interests.

Dating is actually pretty wonderful in the bay area, with a few caveats:

1. For the most part, you must develop a non-aspy style of communication. Understanding how to read body language, knowing when to ask questions/follow-up questions, being an honest, authentic listener.

2. Have interests outside of work. It's great that you love your job, but if that's all you have, a partner will have doubts that you have room for them in your life. It shows both a lack of well-roundedness, and in the case of the start-up obsessed, a hyperfocus on money. Many techies also come off quite arrogant, failing to value non-engineering talents and methods of thinking.

3. Find your sub-culture. My love-life/dating life was always very successful, but that's because I had specific demographics based on common interests and activities. Mine were (I use past-tense as I'm quite happily married and in love to a woman I met after moving abroad) music (punk/ska/folk/world). I didn't just listen, but became part of the music scene, met everybody within it, helped promote shows, chipped in on kickstarter projects. This helped my geekiness move away from my own hyper-interest in pointless start-ups, and lose my interest in financial success, finding expression to be infinitely more satisfying.

4. Also, kink. The bay area has the best recreational sex scene in the world. If you're sexually intelligent, seduction and love will follow.

5. Leave the bay area. I'm not saying hop in the SUV and go crush some sweet slopes. Just leave. The next time you quit your job, stick your thumb-out and hitchhike around the world, or at least fly/bus/train there. The bay area is beautiful, but it's really small and myopic. I noticed on OKCupid that the women I was interested in were very passionate about music, literature, dance, and travel, so I decided to explore these and found myself incredible excited by them. I decided to forgo tropical/mountain vacations instead to explore the world, because national geographic just wasn't enough.

---

Still, love and sex weren't enough. I loved San Francisco for the first 6 years, then moved to Oakland, where I should have been all along, for the next 6, after certain traumatic life events made me care more about myself than my career, and found myself wanting to live more and work less. It didn't last long, because before I knew it, techies turned into brogrammers, and I had to listen to them speak about VC and apps all of the time. The final straw was when a semi-well-known east-coast fratbro type messaged me on couchsurfing asking if I wanted to be his wing-man. Later that day, a co-worker was bragging to me about hiring a security firm to spray down homeless people who dared sleep in front of his condo building. He was the kind of bro who liked to make racial and homophobic statements under his breath when he was frustrated with his work. Unprofessionally I rm -rf'd my laptop (nuking several large projects which I had in flight), told HR where to send my last paycheck, and told my boss where to stick it. I've been very happy ever since.

In the end, if your goal is greed, or you care about nothing else than work, then the bay area is for you.

Everything else can be found in greener pasteurs.

Some seriously bad analysis in the article

'About half of millennial tech workers say it’s important (26.5%)'