If Silicon Valley Moved to New York | Hacker News Reader

If Silicon Valley Moved to New York

bhargreaves.com

32 pointsthesyndicate31 comments

The dicey assumption made in this piece is that most of the people who work in major Silicon Valley companies actually live in San Francisco.

I wouldn't know any statistics but, in general, Silicon Valley is much more centered in the South Bay and than it is in San Francisco and those who work at Adobe, Sun, Apple, Oracle, etc. would normally live either on the Peninsula or in the San Jose area.

Just to take Apple as an example, in general, it is pretty crazy for the thousands of people who work in Cupertino (which is immediately adjacent to San Jose and is some 50 miles from most points in San Francisco) to live somewhere other than the South Bay or at least the Peninsula - from which locations the commutes would be pretty modest (still likely 20 minutes or more for most people but not the hour-plus it would be from the City).

Some people undoubtedly live in San Francisco while working at Apple simply because they like the City so much and prefer to live there in spite of the long commute. But these would likely be unusual exceptions and not the rule.

I think you'd be wise to talk to a lot of people that work at these companies. A huge portion of Apple/Yahoo/Google employees live in the city or some equally far-away place in the East Bay. Each of these companies (and others) send in free buses with Wi-Fi to various parts of the city several times a day.

So sure, they're "commuting" — but really they just walk a couple of blocks, hop on board a free bus and start working during their commute.

Among my team within Google, the people with kids live in the South or East Bay. Those without live in San Francisco. The only ones I know living on the peninsula just moved to the area and haven't migrated to the extremes, yet.

All three of those companies are fairly entrenched, and probably have a far older workforce than you would think.

The post is focused on 20-somethings who want to live in an urban area. Manhattan is somewhat analogous to San Francisco; it tends to have a high concentration of young people who want to work in tech and startups.

Great post. I'm reprinting this from my comment on the blog because I hope more HN peeps who are making the NYC/SV choice read this:

Having recently moved from SV to NYC, I love how much more quickly I can get to startup offices and events. Even better, when I do travel, I do it by train. This means I don't need to pay for a car or car insurance, and it means that I can read my book while on the subway. In Silicon Valley, I couldn't afford a car and had to bike everywhere or be at the mercy of the Caltrain... a _very_ bad thing at 2:30am in San Francisco, I can tell you.

Also, Manhattan rent can be expensive (although the LES is not much worse than Palo Alto btw), but living in Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, or even NJ and Connecticut is much cheaper and, as the map above shows, adds only minutes to your commute time.

Also, after working hard on a startup, sometimes it's nice to play hard too. Bars and clubs that close at 4am, and being able to get home by cab, can make that part of your lifestyle a lot easier.

There are definitely a lot of upsides to NYC living, especially if nightlife is your favorite thing (and you have the cash for it).

I personally have spent a lot of time in NY (my gf lives there), but I definitely prefer SF (or anywhere in the bay area):

-NYC rents are pricier. SF is at least $300/month cheaper for a similar distance from downtown, which easily covers the price of a car (I'm one of those who really values the convenience one gives)

-SF has much better weather. I find NYC way too cold in the winter and way too hot in the summer

-SF wins on the outdoors - hiking and mountain biking are <15 minute drive away, but very hard to access in NYC (esp. without a car).

-NYC wins on mass transit, though often, I found it difficult to say, work on a laptop there due to overcrowding - BART/Caltrain typically have more seats available.

In Austin, I can affordably live in the middle of the city and bike to work, and the specter of having to move to the suburbs to afford hypothetical children isn't there since the public schools are decent. The far fewer walkable neighborhoods make me sad and the summers are probably trying for non-native Texans, but considering the things most people optimize for when choosing a city, it isn't surprising that so many people are moving here.

That's why I've never understood the whole Silicon Valley thing. Who wants to go to the suburbs!?

you don't enjoy biking, rolling hills and nice weather, year-round ?

This is specific to the suburbs?

(Cycling sucks in the suburbs, anyway.)

no, it is to the valley (relative to nyc at least)

I think my point was, why not just have your company in the San Fransisco proper and forget about the suburbs? It works for New York.

Well, then it is just the standard:

1) Most VC's and tech companies are in the "suburbs"

2) Office + home rent much cheaper

3) A lot of potential employees (and easily most of those with kids) live in the valley.

Imagine what would happen if Columbia or NYU were where Stanford is (not in the city i.e)...

Also, maybe some clean air and sunny weather can make for some good startup conditions (like sourdough bread :-)

Thinking of the entire valley as looking entirely like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_San_Jose_(crop).jpg is a bit hyperbolic. Downtown Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose are reasonably urbanized and offer at least some of the culture one would find in SF (albeit far less).

It also matters what age you are. Those with kids tend to favor the suburbs over SF. Those without may favor SF. Personally, I work in Sunnyvale and hate a long commute more than anything else -- hence I am happily living there.

> Who wants to go to the suburbs!?

People who like space between them and their sociopathic neighbors?

I had a passive-aggressive downstairs neighbor who would never tell me if I was disturbing her; she went straight to the apartment office every time. When I tried to ask what was disturbing her, she wouldn't answer the door. For the life of me, I never figured out what she was complaining about. I played my guitar amp with headphones and never turned the TV beyond a reasonable volume, but nobody ever listens to the person who is accused of being loud, especially when the person complaining is a single mom with baby in tow. After suffering the tyranny of my downstairs neighbor and threats of fines or eviction for noise violations, I decided to move into a house in west San Jose.

I've lived in large cities and generally enjoyed the convenience, but that apartment was my last. Here, I don't need to wear headphones to play my guitar. I can actually use my stereo speakers when watching movies. When friends come over to play board games on a Saturday afternoon, I don't have to quiet them down when something exciting happens. I can barbecue in my back yard during the summer, and if I feel like hanging picture frames at 2:30 AM, nobody else cares.

The suburbs obviously aren't for everybody, but they work for me.

Insulation has dramatically improved since you lived in the city. I live in a building with ~300 units, and when I am in my unit I am under the impression that I have the building to myself. I have never heard anything.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who wants to hang pictures at 2:30. I just do it, and if someone asks me to stop, I will. But nobody has ever asked.

New York is great, and the high density is very invigorating, but there are problems. Number one among them is that NY is just too expensive. It is impossible to bootstrap anything there. There are just too many greedy landlords.

Even when the banking industry collapsed rents did not go down significantly.

The kinds of people who work in startups are probably living in cheaper neighborhoods and finding creative ways to make their dollars go further. As pg has commented, nerds tend to be rather frugal. Also, salaries are high equivalent to the higher rents, so it all evens out in the end. Calling NY expensive is misleading. It can be expensive. But it can also be inexpensive if that's your goal.

You can definitely find cheaper places, but in the end you are still going to be paying almost double what a cheap place in the Valley costs.

Also if you are bootstrapping, your salary isn't really tied to cost of living.

Are salaries actually commensurately higher? As far as I can tell, typical engineering pay in NYC is about the same as typical engineering pay in California.

Depends on what you do. Finance jobs (they hire people with engineering degrees) will typically pay better than an engineering job.

California is not exactly known for it's low cost of living. Try comparing NYC and SF to Kansas or something.

It is what markets are willing to pay. Rent is outrageous, but there are also people in college or just out of college who doesn't mind having a few roommates.

My friend's old studio was 1600, and was replaced by two college guys paying 1800.

Not that I'm happy about it, but it is what it is.

Additionally, it depends on how you track "rent" going down. Prior to the dip, the rents also required an agent's fee, which is easily a month or two's rent. I think more places nowadays are without these fees, so it is a little bit cheaper.

One thing to keep in mind when doing these sorts of comparisons as well are the small lifestyle changes that kick in when you live in a really urban place. Before, I usually bought about a weeks worth of groceries - go to the market, load up the trunk. Now, I only buy for dinner or maybe the next couple of meals.

The whole infrastructure of CA still seems suburban, more driven by mindset and culture.

Comparing the convenience of the day-to-day things would be very interesting, but I'm not entirely sure how one would do this outside of just "cost analysis", which seems pretty shallow.

Nice post! But if you want to play the startup city commute game, Cambridge, MA wins. I'm working on-site with two clients right now, both in my neighborhood (I walk).

(Note: Boston, MA loses, though. Commuting from the 'burbs sucks.)

This reads like yet another post demonstrating the NYC tech crowd's massive inferiority complex.

Or alternatively, the reflexive need of some to transpose everything into NY terms to "understand" it.

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/72-the-world-as-...

The Seattle crowd does the same kind of stuff, constantly. Makes it impossible to have a conversation in Seattle about start-ups because anything you think of can set someone with the "we're just as good as the silicon valley" inferiority complex off onto an endless rant.

Now that New Yorkers have fucked themselves with their bread and butter (i.e. finance), they are looking at the next best thing: technology startups. I can't say I blame them, but I find it quite annoying.

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