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Comment by paul7986 | Hacker News Reader

As a visitor of San Fran ... it's homeless population is a shock to the system and a very unpleasant one. Though they say thats just San Fran for ya? Crazy housing prices and an insane homeless population. What's the good thing about living there when here on the East coast like in PA or Baltimore suburbs that doesnt exist, housing costs are way lower, salaries in govt. IT are healthy and homelessness is not such epidemic... why do people want to live in San Fran who arent chasing the startup dream or living that dream? What's the allure?

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But where would they go? Homelessness was a problem long before the tech industry sort of took over SF. The magnitude of the problem would require a massive political effort and innovation that is near impossible.

I'm more surprised by the fact that the tech industry chose SF of all the places in California.

There are lots of reasons why Silicon Valley became what it is today, but it seems that by far it is because William Shockley [0] was born there - "Shockley is the man who brought silicon to Silicon Valley."

Shockley was working at Bell Labs over in New Jersey on solid state electronics, and was jointly awarded the Noble Prize for the discovery of the transistor effect. When he moved back home, angry at how the invention of the transistor had been handled at Bell Labs, he took a number of researchers with him. Together they were one of the first startups in Stanford's new "Stanford Industrial Park", and the first to use silicon. Some of those researchers later started Fairchild Semiconductor, from which came many companies like Intel and AMD.

If you haven't heard of it yet, Stephen Fry has an excellent (if too brief!) podcast that goes through this and the history of other big advances in technology in great detail, called Stephen Fry's Great Leap Years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

[1] http://www.stephenfry.com/greatleapyears/

SF wasn’t chosen by the tech industry. South Bay was. Most big Tech firms’ HQs are outside the city itself, precisely because of lower real estate costs.

The move to SF has been much more recent and mainly fueled by the desire of younger workers to live/work in more densely populated areas. And then most startups started basing out of SF proper to be closer to these workers (and appear “cool”) so now you have all the big startup successes based in the city proper.

The tech industry chose the (South) Bay because it was dirty cheap. A bunch of orchards and ugly factories, so they could build up their (silicon) factories etc. there.

I’m surprised by how many people don’t know this history. SJ used to be a very affordable place, it was orchards and farmland.

There is no better place to grow apricots. This is a tragedy: people can go anywhere, but you can't do that with plants.

The proximity of Stanford and Berkeley didn't hurt.

I'm moving to the bay area from Baltimore for a lot of reasons. First, the salary increase means I'll be putting away more money every year, housing costs considered. Second, Baltimore is a mess. The roads are horrible and there is an insane amount of crime. Third, the weather is better and there are fewer bugs.

Baltimore is cheap, but I want to live somewhere that I can ride my bike without the fear of getting killed for it.

There's another great thing about the west coast that cheap houses can't get you- and it's a beautiful culture of outdoorsiness and insanely easy access to mountains, oceans, and desert within an hour or twos drive- this is true from Seattle to San Diego.

You can seriously go on a little mini vacation every weekend for almost no money. I suppose if money were no object - why would you choose to live elsewhere?

Same goes for Baltimore with mountains(Shenadoah, VA or mountains in central PA), beaches (MD, DE or NJ) and amusement parks all within 2 to 3 hour drive. Friends and I last weekend went hiking in PA (loop trail with 25 mid to large size waterfalls - Ricketts Glen) and after went to amusement park in the woods (Knoebels) for a few hours.

Cool you like the west .. it's just too expensive and socialistic for me. Independent voter here.

That's why a lot of Californians have been moving to Denver or Boise.

The mountains are more like a 4h drive from San Francisco though.

Sure but you have incredible and unique protected beauty just north of the Golden Gate Bridge so SF gets a pass.

Beauty yes, not mountains.

Harford County.. Bel Air, Fallston .. Baltimore County like Hunt Valley and many other similar areas that are suburbs not city.

Buying a house in PA on almost Silicon Valley (working remotely) salary you can buy two and other investments.

"Crazy housing prices and an insane homeless population"

Those are two facets of the same issue which is a demand much higher than the supply. SF has one of the best tech scenes in the world (to the point where it becomes stomach-churningly nauseating), and it's also just a hip metropolitan city with other thriving non-tech scenes.

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