Bay Area Hiring: Stiff Competition for Mediocre Talent

entrepreneur.com

3 points·dawhizkid··2 comments

But, then, after a few months, I realized something a bit odd. Everyone I met was (in his or her own opinion) uniquely “special” in some way. Every salesperson I tried to recruit was the best on his or her team. Every speaker I heard was in the most demand for his or her specialty. Every startup founder had discovered the Next Big Thing. ...

After my disillusionment wore off, I realized that in the Bay Area everyone had to be a rock star, because claiming to be anything less made them look relatively pathetic. All of this hyperbole about people and companies had built what I started calling the “Bay Area Hype Machine.” Once everything becomes “epic,” nothing less will do, so hype ends up everywhere.

That's when things began to go off the rails: when we started dividing people into two categories - "superstar" and "mediocre".

Cost of living is through the roof, and companies prefer that you're already there (versus relocation) anyway. At some point it becomes a revolving door. There's no chance I'd uproot my family to move to the bay area for a career because pay simply doesn't match cost of living if you're used to a normal middle class lifestyle anywhere else.

Housing is a big problem, and the supply side needs to increase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com