So whether or not Silicon Valley is important to you has everything to do with what you value in life. As the article said, there is a big generation gap here. I'm an older coder who doesn't give a crap how many opportunities are around because I only need one at a time. And with remote work becoming ever more prevalent, I just don't foresee ever having a desire to move to SV.
I live where I can lead the life I want, not work the job I want.
I also don't see how being "NOT surrounded" by tech events could possibly be a good thing. If you're not interested, you don't have to go. It's not like tech is forced on everyone! But if you suddenly feel like going to an engaging talk—whether it's on a JS framework or on combinatorial game theory—you always have the option. You wouldn't have that choice otherwise.
The monoculture of "tech" is a grind after you visit other places. The Bay Area is a fine place if you get excited by networking events and like asking people at a bar about their deck, but I find it mind-numbing.
My tech employee friends in NYC, who work for respected names and are great at what they do, don't spend weekends at hackathons or weeknights running from tech office to tech office for free food at meetups. Here, it is okay and even normal to finish a work day and go experience art, culture, history, etc... things which all do exist in SF and are often great quality there, for sure, but which in certain employment circles seem to be pretty much ignored.
To each their own.
Outside of SV startups, many companies in the Bay have reasonable hours. There is definitely a workaholic expectation in NYC.
It's a perfectly diverse metropolitan area with tech as an addition, not as a replacement. That's strictly more than many other cities I've spent time in from Ottawa to Charlotte. Calling it a monoculture is simply not accurate or, if it is, so many cities don't have even that.
There exists things that aren't tech in SF, but the scale of which is much lower than other major cities like NYC. More importantly though, even in non-tech scenes, tech is always there. It's the guy at the party that seems to find you no matter how much you move around the room. I found it suffocating - no matter where you go you can never fully disengage from the industry.
The measure of a tech monoculture isn't (IMO) the existence of other things, it's whether or not tech tags along with all of these other things.
There are plenty of cultural events in SF not involving tech. Museums, art shows, live music, etc.
> I can drive to 8 national parks and monuments in half a day. I have a great place to raise my kids, and I am NOT surrounded by tech events and meetups... I am surrounded by people who like to spend our free time outside.
Literally all of this is true of the bay area, pretty much as soon as you stop living in the densest urban part of it (and even then, for some people: my cousins are raising a kid in the city and they love it, including the ability to drive to tons and tons of different state and national parks).
Sure job opportunityes are few, especially of the interesting kind, and pay is awful, but overall it's very hard to beat.
I don't really get the point of people pretending it's for the entartainment, especially if whatever you do starts with a three hours drove to get out of the urban area.
That doesn't really sound a high quality lifestyle, but to each their own.
To get out of the suburban sprawl..
Kings Canyon Sequoia Yosemite Lassen Volcanic Pinnacles Muir Woods Point Reyes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NationalParks.forwiki.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_...
But, Muir Woods is part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes are not separate parks.
http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/prog/nlcs/California_Coastal_NM....
http://www.fs.fed.us/visit/berryessa-snow-mountain-national-...
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3f/bb/7f/3fbb7f0fe...
I'm thinking Seattle area is likely.
I'd love to live in Torrey and I'd move back to SLC if I could get a job in an industry that doesn't suck, but all things considered I'd take the bay area over anywhere in Utah.
Spending free time outside pretty much defines the bay area. We're here because it's always sunny and not too hot so we can spend our time outside.
I pay $1150 to lease a 1600 sqft house in Houston, and make more money than I'd make in the Bay, and control my stack instead of being a worker bee.
I will never draw a Bay Area salary. But I have a great house and a kid in a good private school for <50% of the cost to live in SFO.
That is far above average.
I don't know about the 400k specifically, but I hope you might want to change your attitude: you don't need to sell for what you believe is reasonable and can imagine; you want to be selling to people who have more money than sense.
I love Austin, but it's probably arguable that its "culture" (in the art/culture sense of the word) even approaches Houston's. "Houston is one of only five cities in the United States with permanent professional resident companies in all of the major performing arts disciplines: opera, ballet, symphony, and theater"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Houston#Arts_and_th...
And Houston is cheaper than Austin, too... but I've found Austin's tech scene to be slightly up on Houston's (if only because Austin is more compact and so getting around to the nearest meetup is a bit easier... also, Austin has a much better VC scene, but Houston does have a surprisingly large tech scene, even given that Houston is probably going to become the country's third-largest city.) http://www.businessinsider.com/r-americas-city-rankings-set-...
But bdcraven is right... modern here tends to mean .NET or Java at most of the larger Fortune 100 companies based here (mostly oil and gas, medicine, and finance.)
You'll need a lot of air conditioning and maybe a swimming pool (or two) during the summer though.
The networking benefits are real, but is that worth the cost of living, commute, lack of options for housing?
Then why the hell do you? To make someone else rich? To help VCs get a few extra dollars? Slave away with 60 hours weeks for years only to see an exit that nets you less than what you could have made working for any of the big companies? So that you can experience wanting to move on after a few years but worrying about losing stock options? SO you can sit around wondering when the company is going to IPO and you can actually make some cash? (meanwhile the CEO cashed out years ago, and doesn't want to IPO ever)
Seriously though, I feel the tone and attitude you're satirizing are describing the startup culture pretty well.
The equity has never made up the loss of salary. As an employee your company has to become really, really big for it to be life changing and that's incredibly unlikely to happen for all but one or two startups every few years and there are many thousands of startups. As an employee working at a small startup can't be about the money, if it is then you are wasting your time.
If you're good, you can advance much more rapidly through startups and then parlay that experience into either a lucrative BigCo job or consulting gigs.
Personally, I love the geography in the Bay, but the money argument works out too. Especially when it comes to things that are practically fixed cost relative to where you live, like flying (often cheaper from big cities) or travelling, or many consumer goods.
Expenses are far more than double in the bay. Pay is barely any higher in Top employers... Plenty of senior devs in the bay work for 160k plus options that they might or might not be worth anything, and that they will not be able to afford to buy if they leave, and might not see a liquidity event in 5 years. So they get paid LESS and the job is only worth it if they chain themselves to an employer. Netflix offers a better deal... But then welcome to Netflix's culture.
The money argument just does not work at the top end. My current employer is based in the bay, but a large percentage of the senior talent is remote, precisely because the bay is a really shitty deal for what most tech companies pay.
Just look at mortgages: the difference is not 2x, it's 5x. California taxes are huge. I did the math. For me, it's not even close, and that's assuming Netflix compensation.
You're definitely an outlier.
Every time I've done salary comparisons, SV vastly exceeds every other area especially at the upper end. For most other metros, you have only a handful of employers who are even willing to consider paying a developer >$180k. In SV, you can get competitive auctions going >$300k.
http://www.inc.com/associated-press/top-20-cities-for-tech-s...
That list excludes biotech, and Boston is one of the top biotech hubs, so I suspect that would boost it even higher.
1. Read https://breakoutlist.com/. If that argument matches your motivations, go to San Francisco.
2. Do you have a (relatively) niche interest, like VR/AR, machine learning, or blockchains? Go where those companies are: San Francisco and New York.
3. Do you want to experience a city where everything happens? Go to New York.
Otherwise, pick Austin. Maybe Seattle depending on weather preferences and distance from friends and family.
I would be hard-pressed to come up with names of 3 successful startups from Austin, and I think most people would be too.