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Comment by neonate | Hacker News Reader

Separating San Jose and San Francisco obscures how much the Bay Area is dominating this data. That'll be even more of an issue if they're failing to count the rest of the Bay Area (Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc.) with those two. Are they?

Edit: the report seems to define the areas as "San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward" and "San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara", so it looks like they're including more than just SF and SJ. But the strange way they draw those lines seems arbitrary, making me wonder why they split up the Bay Area to begin with. And again: are they leaving other parts of the SF Bay Area out? and how much bigger would the total get if so? Edit: they're not. See below.

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Those are Census metropolitan statistical areas.

> The U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines a set of core based statistical areas (CBSAs) throughout the country. CBSAs are delineated on the basis of a central urban area or urban cluster – in other words: a contiguous area of relatively high population density. CBSAs are composed of counties and county equivalents.[3] The counties containing the core urban area are known as the central counties of the CBSA. A central county is a county in which 50% of its population lives in urban areas of at least 10,000 in population, or where a population of 5,000 are located in a single urban area of at least 10,000 in population where that urban area is split between more than one county.[4] Additional surrounding counties, known as outlying counties, can be included in the CBSA if these counties have strong social and economic ties to the central counties as measured by commuting and employment. Outlying counties are included in the CBSA if 25% of the workers living in the county work in the central county or counties or, conversely, 25% of the employment in the county is held by workers who live in the central county or counties. All counties in a CBSA must be contiguous, and a county can only be included within one CBSA.[4] In New England, towns have precedence over counties, so statistically similar areas are defined in terms of town-based units known as New England city and town areas (NECTAs).

> Adjacent CBSAs are merged into a single CBSA when the central county or counties of one CBSA qualify as an outlying county or counties to the other CBSAs.[4] One or more CBSAs may be grouped together or combined to form a larger statistical entity known as a combined statistical area (CSA) when the employment interchange measure (EIM) reaches 15% or more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

San Jose and SF are combined in a combined statistical area, but the linkages are not strong enough to consider them a single metropolitan statistical area.

This is interesting when compared to Los Angeles, I think the Bay Area and LA are similar in terms of the sprawl but one is thought of as a single city and the other is not.

Oakland is to SF as Anaheim/Orange County is to LA

Unlike the Bay Area, LA-OC is a continuous sprawl of habitation and commerce.

The only parts of the Bay Area that don't match that description are Marin and Monterey.

Unlike LA-OC I can take a train from SF to San Jose (the souther tip of the Bay Area) within 1 hour and 30 minutes. (LA-OC takes over 6 hours).

This is false. LA to OC by train is 30 to 45 min. LA trains to San Diego or Santa Barbara are only 2 hours and both are much farther from LA than SJ is from SF.

Ok you're right I must have been looking at late night options.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Los+Angeles,+CA/orange+count...

It's almost twice as long as SF to San Jose: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA/San+Jose,+...

That’s a weird way to describe things. You can drive from downtown LA to Orange County in less than an hour in rush hour traffic.

>Separating San Jose and San Francisco obscures how much the Bay Area is dominating this data

Sort of...

Have you ever tried to commute to San Jose/Cupertino/Sunnyvale from, say, Walnut Creek, Pleasant hill, Richmond, etc..??

While they are all still in the greater SV orbit - commuting between many of the greater SV cities is a fucking nightmare.

BART, Caltrin, LightRails, Freeways, buses, etc -- are all disconnected and fucking suck.

I have turned down multiple positions in the south bay due to commuting and housing cost issues.

And if you don't think I know what I am talking about, my family is 5th generation San Franciscan, with family in Saratoga since 1959. I lived in San Jose an commuted to San Francisco from San Jose for over a decade - and lived all over.

My best commute ever was a bike+bus commute from Alameda Island to SF for almost a decade.

Worst commute was from Alameda to Sunnyvale.

The biggest problem with SV is transit first, housing second.

So to treat San Jose and San Francisco as if they were different freaking states, is to me, fair play.

> While they are all still in the greater SV orbit - commuting between many of the greater SV cities is a fucking nightmare.

The same could be said about commuting across opposite sides of LA.

I can't disagree -- I couldn't imagine working in Beverly Hills and having to make it to group therapy at noon on a Wednesday in Agoura Hills.

But I think it's asinine to think of San Francisco and San Jose as two markets in this context. To me, the top five (four) markets are no surprise.

I'd love to hear stories about the next five and the next five after that. It's far more interesting to understand how code and technology are being advanced by those outside the mainstream.

Those splits are probably based on census metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)

Thanks! After digging around the various Wikipedia pages I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose%E2%80%93San_Francisco..., whose table seems to make it clear that the peninsula is all included in either the SJ or the SF MSAs. So they're not leaving out PA or MV or anything like that.

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