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Comment by alexbanks | Hacker News Reader

> And the concentration of tech talent means that it's always easy to find a new job, or even to start your own company.

I've never been there, but I see this echoed a lot. Is it actually true? I'm interested in both, but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

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Starting a company is always unbelievably difficult, but the Bay Area's density makes things a little easier.

I used to live in an apartment on 55 9th St, San Francisco. The guy in the apartment across the hall also started a company at the same time as me. He introduced me to other founder friends in the apartment building.

The lobby has a coffee shop where I've made other founder, angel, and VC friends.

And I haven't even started enumerating all my other startup-y friends I made outside of my own apartment lobby.

I got very lucky, and your own mileage may vary, but if you're looking for helpful startup-y people, the Bay Area is still the world capital.

I'm in the process of starting a company.

Three people I know have made (very early, very tentative) investment offers. A former VPE has offered to be an advisor, and has introduced me to a really good salesperson.

That sort of thing is really limited to places where people understand saas businesses, have the appropriate risk appetite, and have previously earned enough disposable cash to take real risks.

Another aspect is simply institutionalizing the idea that starting a business may not be stupid. This helps when you're trying to talk SOs onboard into taking huge pay cuts.

>but I'm wary of the exaggeration that may be "it's easy".

It really is. It's why I cant bring myself to leave this place even with all it's warts. Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than a few emails is really empowering, actually. I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent on a single good job no matter what the relocation bonus is.

> I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent on a single good job no matter what the relocation bonus is.

"if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"

I'm in Sydney. While not compatible to SF I do feel I can leave a job after a year and grab another one quick. I'm about to start a new job. It took 2 weeks of looking to land a good one.

In fairness, there are plenty of other places in the country with good tech scenes where you wouldn't face this anxiety. None of them quite like the bay, but it's not as though you have to relocate to Flint MI or someplace with zero other prospects. The CO front range, NY, SLC, ATL, and so on all have healthy tech economies, and more places keep cropping up.

> Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than a few emails is really empowering, actually.

Unless you're a front end engineer. Then you'd be behind about 4 frameworks, 2 build systems, and 3 transpiled languages. Might as well be a fortran programmer at that point.

Yes, if you are a developer. Work is very easy to come by, though the vast majority is nowhere near as innovative or exciting as it once was here.

I can't help thinking that this move by Zapier is a way to reduce turnover. I have several friends who smugly relocated away from the bay area, who now hate their jobs and can't leave them because there are no local opportunities.

Working remotely may be different, but the problems of networking and finding new work still apply.

That's silly. Find a job elsewhere willing to pay them to relocate again.

And interview, how? And find it, how? Who will recommend them? You're asking why they don't just eat cake.

These things aren't impossible, just so much harder that my friends (One in Idaho, one in Kansas) haven't been able to manage it, and not for lack of trying.

It has been hard to watch them floundering and begging for help I don't have to give.

The post you're responding to is the type of stuff that is difficult to decipher r.e. "In the Bay Area it's easy to start a company/get a new job."

There's a fine line between "It's relatively easy to get a new job/start a company" and "Just get a new job to pay them to relocate."

I don't mean to minimize your friends' difficulties, but these are solvable problems. I am also not the person to whom you are replying.

Don't include a mailing address on the resume. If you can past the resume screen, the company may be more amenable to a non-local candidate.

Most of Idaho is fairly close to Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. Paying for non-local candidate's flights, meals, and hotels is fairly standard. Kansas is a bit more difficult obviously since it is farther.

Did they lose their whole network when they moved away from the Bay Area? Or did they never live/work in the Bay Area in the first place? It is still possible to leverage one's extended network for opportunities.

It's complicated. I wrote a paragraph or so about it and deleted it, thinking the reasons were either obvious or too specific to their situations. Over five years, I guess they've lost what network they have from when they lived here - I definitely hear and see them less and less, and for the last few years it's really just been about seeing if I have any leads for them :|

I don't think they are being dinged explicitly for their location, but they aren't getting the attention that I do. There are reasons enough for that, that don't involve prejudiced recruiters, though I do think they are being judged as second tier due to their current employment, and their employers location. Their employers are definitely down market. Moreover, their skillset has certainly atrophied over they left. So much so that I can no longer send jobs their way - there isn't a fit. Things are starting to look a little Willie Loman-esque.

Is all of this because they moved out of the valley? They would probably have similar struggles here, but they would also have recruiters banging down their door.

Yea, that's why I live in the Bay Area. Not because I'm so in love with it but because if I move to Flyover, Arkansas, and end up losing/hating the job, where the hell am I going to go? That's right--moving again!

> That's right--moving again!

Why is that bad? Is it a question of inherent stability, or do you have a wife and child who don't want to get dragged around on your job-leash?

Sure, family, children, friends, community ties. The things that make constant moving a pain in the ass as you get older.

> And interview, how? And find it, how? Who will recommend them?

I got a job in New York, while living in Dallas.

Interview: by flying in on an airplane, staying in a cheap hotel, and lining up a few interviews a day for a few days.

Finding it: There's not a shortage of job sites, or recruiters breaking down your inbox.

Recommendations: your former coworkers and friends won't assume you get lead poisoning in the rust belt; they can still recommend you to others, and jobs to you.

I just recently moved from Dallas to New York, and it was only after years of frustration and being ignored by almost everyone outside of Texas not named Amazon (and most companies in Texas that weren't in Dallas). I didn't have recruiters breaking down my inbox. My submissions on job sites seemed to be going in to black holes. If I got multiple interviews in a month I considered myself lucky. I didn't have any former co-workers outside of DFW to call on, and very few inside it.

I'm willing to accept that I'm unusual, but people in this thread are making it sound like I'm a unicorn. I think this industry has serious geographic myopia, and that it is one of the reasons the "talent shortage" is more severe than it needs to be.

A friend of mine got an offer from a startup in Palo Alto that he wanted to negotiate. He literally walked across the street to another interview and had a counter offer when he met with the founder of the first company the next day.

I've done this in San Diego, and it wasn't even in the city. I didn't even cross a street, just half of a small parking lot. It's totally possible in other places.

Easy is relative. I have my linked in profile as private as I can make it, and I still get 1-2 recruiters messaging me every week. When I lived outside the Bay I might have got 10 or so over the course of a year.

Honestly, the answer will really vary depending on who you talk to. That said, if you have worked hard and built a network in the area, those things are actually true. Even around 2001/2002 as well as 2008/2009 there were always jobs around if you knew where to go look. Similarly, if one has established a reputation for themselves (one doesn't need to be a public figure though), it makes it easier to get something off the ground.

Hm. This seems hugely beneficial.

Yes. I know this is just one person's experience, but I've been continuously employed since 1998 except for a 4 week gap after losing my job in 2002. This is at 8 different companies. 10 if you count name changes due to the way one startup was bought and sold.

If I wanted a job in Boston by Wednesday, I'd probably be able to find one, maybe two. Here the only question would be how many people I had time to talk to between now and then.

If you have a desirable resume, skills to back it up and maybe a connection or two, it is beyond trivial to get a job here. It is still challenging to break into, but once you're in, I don't know anyone who is unemployed except by choice and even those people who want to be unemployed get unsolicited job offers.

I wouldn't know about starting your own company, but getting a job right now is absolutely as easy as people make it out to be. Finding a job you want might be a different story, of course.

Starting a company is easy. Making that company succeed is difficult. Finding a job is easy. Being happy in that job long-term is difficult.

So yes -- the statements are true. But not the slightest bit profound.

yeah, it's very true. If you're not happy somewhere you can walk out without a backup plan and have a job in a couple weeks if you're picky.

But you can do that in any major city too. The bay area osnt special in that respect.

Maybe you can get a job in a couple of weeks if you're not picky, but if you actually don't want one of the many "dog" jobs in tech, you're going to be searching for much longer than that. I think this idea that great tech jobs are growing on trees out here is largely a myth.

Just go to AngelList and you can find a ton of startup companies and a decent amount of those that are interesting and offer various levels of pay, interesting work, and life balance. It's not overly hard to find a match though it could take a couple months if you're not "senior" level in your career.

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