Things that suck in Bay Area:
1) People. I don't like to hang with AI engineers and arrogant people. Humbleness is hard to come by here. This is usually brought up as a positive, I couldn't disagree more.
2) Homelessness - Some areas feel like it's Somalia
3) Unkept, unmaintained infrastructure - Pretty much pot holes everywhere, roads ruin tyres and rip apart suspension systems, even if a road is recently built, it has major quality issues. Infrastructure in Bay area is below par that of places like China, Korea, Japan, EU, Switzerland, England, and pretty much any developed country and many parts of the US. Texas has the best roads IMO. I've been to all these places and infrastructure (Alameda county) just reeks of awful people running this place, lack of care for quality and attention to detail, and perhaps mismanagement of funds.
3) Housing - self explanatory
4) Bang for the buck - Cost of living does not match the standard of living. People automatically assume that cost living is proportional to the quality of living. Not even close in the bay area.
5) Micro-analysis of Food culture: I cannot go out and hang with people without someone trying to analyze between 4.8 and 4.9 stars on Yelp. You forgot the purpose of us getting together. This probably exists everywhere in major cities, not just the Bay area.
6) Transit - sucks, expensive and unmaintained. Rampant theft on BART, you generally feel unsafe.
7) Traffic - before this pandemic, it was difficult to go anywhere without taking 3 hours off.
8) Crime - I've had my car broken into 4 times (the city) in the course of 8 months.
9) Way too many laws - Regulation in California will cut you by thousand cuts. Wanna grab a lot and build your own house? Good luck with 18,000 pages of law that govern what you can and cannot do with your land. This is the same in Oregon and Washington state.
10) Wanna form an LLC? $800/year. Why!? What costs are involved in providing a registration for a company? It is $50 in some states, free in many other states.
11) Taxes - I am a centrist and IMO california has way too many taxes (count) and way too much (amount) of your income, property, tolls, estate, utilities, etc. I am fine with high taxes if that results in a better quality of life, but I feel like I am robbed off.
12) Extreme sensitivity towards race, gender, minorities, etc. Shops like this should not exist: https://www.shopwomenmade.com/ - Yep, this is in Berkeley. This is a hot topic but IMO ultra liberalism is playing into their own agenda.
13) Intolerence to anything but extreme left in politics. Oh god, you're doing exactly what extreme right is doing - not listening to other views.
Why the hell am I here? I am looking to get out of the bay area and never return, even for pleasure. SF Bay Area is one of the worst places to live IMO having lived in half a dozen cities in the US and expat in Asia.
Advice to entrepreneurs in the bay area: Find a place in other parts of California, it's a gorgeous state with many cheap cities - perhaps you can help build those small cities into better communities. If Magic Leap can form a 3000 people tech HQ in Ft. Lauderdale in Florida, I am sure you can attract talent in Monterrey, Redding, Bakersfield, etc.