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Comment by fjabre | Hacker News Reader

I struggle with this question myself a lot. I'm in LA currently and instead of conversations about web startups in cafes - I hear managers talking to talent and hot new ideas for movie scripts.. Pretty cool but doesn't help with a web startup.

The one major complaint I continue to hear about SV from my male friends is the severe lack of eligible females there. Being from the east coast and now living in LA I might find it hard to live in place where I'm surrounded by predominantly male engineers 24/7 who are only talking about tech. I used to work as an engineer at Cisco and I remember that feeling. It wasn't a good one.

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"The one major complaint I continue to hear about SV from my male friends is the severe lack of eligible females there. Being from the east coast and living currently in LA I might find it hard to live in place where I'm surrounded by predominantly male engineers 24/7 who are only talking about tech. I used to work at Cisco and I remember that feeling. It wasn't a good one."

The valley sucks, but San Francisco is loaded with single women. You've just got to make an effort to socialize outside of tech circles (which are skewed male everywhere you go).

Also, it helps to have a level of life sophistication beyond that of the average 20-year-old hacker -- a lot of the single women here are more established, and looking for men who have evolved a bit beyond frat-house antics, or guys who survive exclusively on pizza, meat and beer. A lot of startup guys surround themselves with an entourage of unkempt 20-somethings who have no interests in life outside of computers and heavy drinking; it shouldn't be surprising that women are rare in these environments.

SF is better than Mountain View, but is not "loaded with single women" if you compare it to somewhere like NYC. It's still pretty bad.

If you're going to make that kind of comparison, the whole west coast is worse than the east coast. But for the west coast, San Francisco is quite good.

Let me be clearer: there's a lot of personal circumstance in these complaints. I know plenty of guys in the city who have no problems finding or meeting single women (and no, they're not rich, or male models, or anything unreasonable).

There are certainly places in the world where sex ratio is a problem, but if you find yourself in San Francisco and constantly surrounded by male nerds, then you're not doing enough to place yourself in a good situation. When you're working in technology, you have to make a conscious effort to get away from the nerd culture when you're not working. There are lots of women here, but you're not going to find them hanging around the guys at work.

As far as the west coast goes, SF is not bad. But a male in NYC doesn't even have to try, unless you have some sort of bizarre physical deformity. Even if you do have a bizarre physical deformity, there's probably a hipster chick in Williamsburg who would be into that.

But I would like to know where you go in SF where the gender ratio is not a problem. The only place I found that to be true was the marina, which introduces a different set of issues.

I must be the only eligible male with a job in NYC who hasn't found a woman or something, and I'm actually considering taking a job in SF (because of the job and the culture).

I don't know if I didn't date because I was too busy, didn't care, or simply didn't know how to meet people in an unfamiliar environment. Probably all of the above.

> But a male in NYC doesn't even have to try

I need to party with you, as I'm a total loser in NYC. I checked the census details on the male/female ratio here, and it's not that good. Overall, F > M. But from age 18-40 M > F. After that the number of males decline, which make the overall numbers appear favorable to men. Unless you're into post-menopausal women, it's still tough being a man in NYC.

Timr is right.. I've always struggled to meet women, and I'm now dating a psychologist.. and she tells me psychologists have the same complaint but opposite! (not enough single men!!!) Not sure if the same situation happens in San Francisco but..

Funnily, looking for the exact ratio I found this

http://www.physorg.com/news147587458.html

look for female art students !!!

This is actually not bad advice at all. There are loads of single japanese chicks at the art schools in SF.

The reason the women in SF claim there are not enough single men is that no woman really wants to date a build release engineer or an underemployed bartender, which are the two main classes of straight men in SF. Pro-tip: they usually pick the bartender.

In terms of demographics, SF is certainly not bad - it is evenly split from ages 20 to 27. It starts becoming more male at 30+ (about 10:9 M:F), but, when factoring in that SF has a large male gay population (and significantly smaller lesbian one), it should be about even for heterosexual men/women.

New York is certainly skewed female though, about 12:11 F:M for 20-30.

Sources: http://www.city-data.com/housing/houses-San-Francisco-Califo... http://www.city-data.com/housing/houses-New-York-New-York.ht...

I left SF/SV because the dating scene was so bad and I felt like my startup enforced "vow of celibacy" had gone on long enough. There are not enough women, and the women who are there do not like you. If you are married or don't care about dating, it's a great place.

... until you have kids, at which point it stops being so great.

I have friends with kids there. If you have enough money, it's still great. It only sucks if you're financially struggling or sending your kids through the SF public school lottery.

Even if you're not rich, it might not be so bad. I grew up in a state known for it's amazing public school system, and it was still a bunch of bullshit. I would have rather grown up somewhere I could have ridden my bike every day of the year and gotten college credits from one of the best community college systems in the country.

I had kids in SF.

You are either going to spend a spectacular amount of money to rent a town house in an acceptable part of San Francisco (and put up with an insane public school system), or your kids are going to grow up in a California suburb.

That's a dilemma I'm happy to avoid.

The SF public school lottery is garbage, but many of the suburbs are great.

Would rather grow up (or raise kids) in San Mateo vs. Schaumburg. YMMV.

The uncanny resemblance that everything south of South San Francisco and east of Oakland has to Schaumburg definitely informs a lot of my opinions about the area. I lived in Santa Clara, in Soma, and in Noe Valley, for what it's worth.

And, candidly: if you're going to live in a Schaumburg, you should indeed pick Silicon Schaumburg, and not Frozen Schaumburg.

If you're going to live in a Schaumburg, you should indeed pick Silicon Schaumburg, and not Frozen Schaumburg.

That's what I'm sayin'. Citywise, I don't know enough about New Chicago to make an informed opinion. I vowed never to return in 1998, but I've heard it's become a great place.

Chicago, Portland, Austin, Seattle, Philly, DC, NYC, Boston, MSP, A2, Atlanta, Miami --- all better places to live than Silicon Schaumburg. Don't mistake this for boosterism. I love this city, but I'm motivated more by hatred of strip malls.

Disagree with Miami. Spent half year there in 2001. Miami is fucked up. Would live in regular Schaumburg before I lived in Miami again. Ok wait... maybe not. Miami is kind of cool because it is fucked up. But I was glad to get out of there. Also, I thought this was in the context of raising kids? Miami seems like the textbook example of the wrong place to raise kids...

I don't know if it's right to compare all of silicon valley suburbia to schaumburg, either. I think San Mateo is much different than Palo Alto, and both are much better than say... Fremont. The urban density in San Mateo is higher than Minneapolis, for example. I would love to talk about this all day, but need to cut myself off at this post...

I'm getting a kick out of the Schaumburg comments.

I lived there in the mid 90s, working in the next suburb north of there, Rolling Meadows. At least then it was a pretty soulless place and better known as Scumburg and Rolling Ghettos.

I live in a tiny village in the foothills of the Berkshires now. Last night was spent listing to the 150 year old town military band perform on the grounds of the historical society in perfect weather. My small kids ran around and played off by themselves and as I walked around I said hi to 10-20 people I know and who know me. Maybe I'm just getting old but that one simple night was worth more than anything living in SF could give me.

Hmmm. I grew up in SF. Parents didn't have money, went through the public school system. Public schools here aren't that bad, as long as you apply yourself and get into the magnet schools.

(Still live here too. The dilemma I have now is that I hate the commute to my south bay job, but I don't want to live the city. I still think most of the peninsula is pretty damn boring.)

I turned out fine. (I think...)

I find this not to be true, and to state generalizations about SF/SV dating scene or lack thereof, is also far off from the truth.

Have you ever heard of Okcupid? I'm a tech guy, in the tech scene, working for a tech startup, and have found that if you want to find/date women, you need to be proactive about it (kind of like the old days). The city, and the surrounding bay area are full of available women, who do want to meet "you"... just need to look

If you're not social, then you wont meet anyone in this city, especially if you moved here for a job, and have little friends, or time to meet people, hence why dating sites like Okcupid are essential. If you grew up here, then it might be easier as you have a larger network of friends, acquaintances - that generally leads to more social events, etc..

Also - last time i checked, we have about an equal ratio of men to women (does not include sexual orientation)

Ah yes, OKCupid.

Here is my take on OKCupid. In SF, the real life singles scene is dominated by men. If you go to an event or a bar, there is a lopsided ratio of men to women. The women who are out, are typically insane. The cool women you want to meet are actually on OKCupid because they are tired of being surrounded by dirtbags and nerds (and insane women). So OkCupid works well for a man dating in SF, because that's where the normal, interesting, good-looking women are.

In NYC the scene is the opposite. The bars and events are overrun with attractive women. The weird trolls are the ones hanging out on OKC. Thus, if you move across country to NYC and update your OKC location, you'll start getting tons of messages from tattooed roller-derby girls who have pet snakes. The type you were tired of meeting at the bars in SF.

YMMV, I'll grant that maybe YC has inspired a generation of debonair hackers to move to SF and clean up with all the amazing local women.

hehe. Nice reply and do agree with: "So OkCupid works well for a man dating in SF, because that's where the normal, interesting, good-looking women are." _ I think it works well for women too, as men are constantly messaging ladies more than the opposite, of course, I am one of those men. :)

Why exactly are there so many attractive women? Is it something to do with NY being popular among women, or the culture of the east coast, or the presence of Ivies, or...?

edit: To clarify my question- why are there more women in NYC? Is there a clear cause?

I have never seen anybody describe the Ivy League as being known for having attractive women.

In one of John Taylor Gatto's books he brings up that Ivy League schools base part of their admissions process on the attractiveness of the applicant because they want to project a certain image. I'm not sure if this is true or not, and I can't find a citation, but it was in Weapons of Mass Instruction [1] I believe, but possibly Dumbing Us Down [2]. It was in his letter to his niece at the end of Weapons, if I recall correctly. I have also been told by a friend that is going to graduate school to an Ivy that it was part of the admissions process, though I'm not sure how she knew this (I believe told by a previous graduate).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteacher... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Sch...

The explanation is quite simple: male/female ratio in NYC is ~0.9 and in Bay Area it's about 1.03 http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/a_gender.html

'Why?' is almost certainly industries and culture attracting young migration differently by gender. New York has more media, entertainment, fashion, art. Also, NYC has more rigid and easy-to-read hierarchies of male success -- in finance, law, big corporations, media fame -- for women looking to land conventional 'big game'.

I live in NYC and can think of three reasons.

(1) There are a lot of colleges and non-engineering schools traditionally skew in favor of women

(2) NYC is very gay friendly

(3) The women here are exceptionally beautiful, setting the standards very high, messing up market efficiency

The reasons for migration to cities are always economic. There are more jobs "for women" in NYC.

I like Tyler Cowen's theory: "[the two variables are] income inequality, and the willingness of wealthier men to marry beautiful women from the lower income and social classes. Women then compete for lucrative marriage prizes." http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/11... NYC has both variables.

I bet it is a variety of factors, all adding up:

1. with all the skyscrapers, there's a very high-density need for secretaries (and their variants), which are roles that are disproportionately historically filled by women (for whatever reason -- please nobody launch into PC gender flame fest here)

2. lots of rich and/or high "status" ambitious men in suits -- draws many kinds of women like flies (not all, but many)

3. maybe also the high-density concentration of art, dance, advertising, book publishing industries -- all of which seem to disproportionately attract women rather than men

... plus many other factors. I just doubt it's one thing.

NYC specifically has a large number of attractive women for the same reason LA does: a lot of industries based in the city which employ and are built on attractive women. There are people working service jobs (waitress, bartender, etc.) who really want to break into those industries, too.

In LA, it's movies and music. In NYC, it's music, modeling, fashion.

That said, I'd prefer a "6" who is super-intelligent and interesting, to a "9" with whom I have nothing in common.

Read: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Artists spend their whole lives on the awareness of seeing. When you fall for someone you truly see them, much like an artist does. There is more beauty in that than a roomful of 10's at a wet T-shirt contest.

Since when is doing the whole startup thing about lifestyle and dating women???

If you get it this way, you have already lost in comparison to those dedicated _only_ to the success of their startup.

They don't call it "Man Jose" for nothing.

Thanks for the laugh! :-)

I worked and lived in downtown "Man Jose" for a few years - It was always amusing going out, to say the Mission mAle House and observing the wolfpacks encircling any available female(s).

Hint: don't stray too far from larger universities. Santa Cruz is a nice gender balance. San Francisco isn't bad. Berkeley can be alright, if a bit ghetto.

Santa Cruz is still getting better, too. The gender balance has always been good, and the ratio of attractive females vs. unattractive ones has been improving.

Are you kidding? Berkeley is probably the worst of the worst.

Are there no eligible females in SV? Being a person more interested in finding a mate than the "predominantly male engineers 24/7 who are only talking about tech" wouldn't that put you at a comparative advantage to them with the females who do exist in SV?

I would think it might even be better than LA where being a developer or startup founder is not a asset in a movie fame and fortune mindset.

An idea: stay in LA and do a startup that manages/matches talent to managers. No business plan needed and doesn't need to even work past the "I can get you a deal/make you famous" intro.

When I lived in LA it seemed to impress girls if you said you "had a job", because most of those aspiring actor types don't.

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