it costs WAY to much to live there and the social/political landscape gives off the impression of being some kind of authoritarian dystopia falsely touting itself as some kind of social utopia.
not really interested in all that noise.
I don't think people quite get how engineering centric SF/The Valley is. There is a meetup for everything and every third person you run into is an engineer. It's truly a programmers paradise.
And no where else do you have the salary leverage that you do in SV. If you have an amazing background with a couple of niche languages, and the right startup comes along that needs engineers with your skillset yesterday, you can manage a homerun salary deal.
The engineer is king in SF. I lived there for five years. And will never regret that time.
P.S. You can still manage good deals on housing in less trendy areas.
Hire a professional relocation assistant. Monica McGee does freelance and corporate relocation. Money well spent and she helped my wife and I land a great deals on a couple of locations.
"hire someone to find you a place that you can afford because there are no affordable places"
"if you luckily have the specific skill some random startup wants, you can make a "homerun salary deal", which you will need because living expenses are terrible, otherwise you are shit out of luck"