Ask HN: Advice for a 25 yr old moving to SF? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Advice for a 25 yr old moving to SF?

15 pointsjoshuawilde29 comments

25 yrs old. Been programming since I was ~13. Grew up in a small town. Maybe spent a total of 7 months living in a big city.

Looking to move to SF in a month or two (will try out a STR first, and if I like that then I'll commit).

My main goals are to : 1. Be around more like minded people (especially with tech and business) 2. Increase my business opportunities and expand my mindset. 3. Make lifelong friends 4. Form mutually beneficial relationships (wrt business/tech)

To be clear, I run a mobile game dev studio with my family, so I have plenty busy with my own projects (not looking for work), but I want to get ahead of the curve some more and increase my opportunities.

Don't think anyone wants to read my life story, so I'll leave it at that.

Any advice? General or specific, I'll take anything.

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Don't move there. It's a hellhole and the cost of living isn't worth it.

Look at Austin, Denver, Atlanta, or Chicago instead. You don't need a 1,000 startups around you when you'll only ever interact with a few dozen.

I like the startup scene in NYC myself. Also, like Randy Newman, I love L.A. I think it is a much more “normal” place that the bay area.

Of all the "cites" you named Chicago is the most affordable and an actual city. Te big difference is the tech scene isn't nuts like in SV, Austin, etc the money is a lot smaller and the expectations are a lot higher -companies that don't make money aren't funded very long. That said Chicago is ranked the #9 city in North America and # 19 in the world for Startups and as I said compared to other startups in other cities our startups tend to make money. Having been in IT in some capacity for the last 35 years I'd say the IT scene in Chicago is strange and lagging behind other cities for reasons I just can't understand but if I was 24 and from a small town looking for city life Chicago is where I'd want to be- NYC is a close second and it would be number one if the housing was cheaper.

I live in SF, and am from Denver and couldn't disagree more. The tech culture here is second to none, people still come from all over the world to work and study here. Myndvice to OP is to come to SF, get plugged into the tech and startup culture while your still young and can leverage that community and the empowerment that comes with it for the rest of their lives.

You can do those things in other cities too. You don't need to pay $6,000/mo in rent and step over human shit every day to succeed in tech.

My net worth is higher than my peers in SF even though I've earned less than them, and it's because the cost of living is out of control. It's not worth the marginal career benefit.

I pay $3200 for rent in a great location, a very nice loft.

Your right, you don't. You also don't need to go to MiT to succeed in tech - but it really helps.

I pay $2,800 for a 3,200 sqft house in a safe, walkable, quiet neighborhood near downtown with better weather than SF.

I'm not saying you can't have a good life in SF, but it's much more common to have a terrible life, and the (small) career opportunities aren't worth.

I also think SF has particularly bad startup culture because of the particular VCs there, but that's a matter of preference. I'd rather work on "boring" startups with gray-haired industry veterans than a moonshot with arrogant, unproven 28 year olds who went to Stanford.

It really sounds like you have a chip, or a few, on your shoulder.

My wife and I were born and educated in the Denver area. We owned a home in the area with a mortgage way less than thr rents were talking about here. We tried to live in the area while progressing my career but there are real limitations. Once we moved to the bay area my career totally blossomed. It was indeed a lifestyle change.

Back to the topic at hand, giving OP advice. He didn't post asking for advice on better cost of living, etc. He asked for advice on moving to SF. There is no substitute for your career than spending your younger years in a crucible like the bay area. It's good advice for them to move there while they're young and can take advantage of the connections made and knowledge learned for a lifetime.

You can say I have a chip on my shoulder because I think SF isn't worth it, but then so do a huge number of people who currently live there [1].

OP asked for advice about moving to SF based on misconceptions he has about career opportunities, so I feel good about telling him to reconsider (as most other people in the thread have).

1. https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/3654062-thes...

No he doesn’t, it has completely devolved from the great city it once was. It’s painful to think about, I had / have so much love for that place, but it has become mismanaged to a complete s*ithole. Forget about ever raising a family there and trying to work in tech / startup world.

25 eh? I envy you. You're frontal lobes have just come online. You can finally make good long term decisions.

Sadly the time to move to the SF bay was in the early 1990's. So, don't chase someone else's dreams.

Your goals can be met easily by going to university. Actually, best met. Go. You're not done learning, you've only just begin. Don't feel weird that you'll be 5-7 years older than everyone else. Just be cool. Keep your head down, filter your friends fiercely. Don't be a creep or a douche, haha. Then graduate with a degree and a wife and a bevy of friends.

Don't want to go to university? Making friends is going to be 1000x harder. No joke.

Anyone 25+ can tell there is so much ego and condescension in this comment that its author is instantly discredited

Yeah and I don’t think he has talked to many of the wise 18 year olds out there: there are loads of them!

Ah yes, take on $200,000 in debt for a worthless degree instead of just starting your career. This advice is predatory, considering the rapidly diminishing value of degrees in the tech industry.

Universities prey on the young in order to bankroll the burgeoning university administrative class.

There's plenty of universities in the world with nominal fees.

Sounds like you're telling OP not to chase "someone else's dreams" and instead to chase YOUR dream.

That's the very definition of advice, an opinon. Esp considering their 4 points.

* FiDi or SoMa got kinda seedy during the pandemic, so you might want to avoid living there. Since you're young, you might like the vibe in the Mission or Marina/Cow Hollow. My favorite neighborhoods are the ones with Victorians/flats west of Hayes Valley (Duboce Tri, Lower Haight, Castro, Divis/Nopa, etc).

* When I first moved to SF I got a 1br apartment, but later rented a very nice 2br2ba flat as the "master tenant" and got a "subtenant" roommate. Maybe you wouldn't consider having a roommate, but it's nice to have someone else around. If you set the rent price relatively low for a high-end apartment where each person has a private bathrm, you'll get more roommate applications than you can handle. Winnow the emails down to dozen or so. When you interview a dozen candidates, there's almost always one person who stands out as someone who would make for a great flatmate. (Warning: if you rent a 3br place and get 2 roommates, it's a lot more complicated. Difficult to know who did what, e.g. left food in the frig, etc)

* You might consider joining a lot of meetup.com groups. I joined literally over 100 SF-based groups and during the 2010's would go to at least 2-3 per month. I stopped going to meetups during the pandemic but it seems like in-person meetups are ramping up again.

* You run a mobile game studio? Join the Stanford Games/Entrepreneurs list. https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/gsb-videogames It doesn't have as much chatter as it used to, but every once in a while there's some insider discussion. I used to be in the game industry, so I'd offer to connect you with people, but it's been some years so my contacts are kinda old.

* Your main goals are mostly professional, but consider the opportunity for other things. When I first moved here, it was supposed to be temporary for maybe 3 years max, so I tried to take advantage of things here that I couldn't do back in Atlanta. I did things like: every winter I joined a shared ski house in Tahoe, I volunteered as a National Park Service docent at the Point Bonita Lighthouse, and did more biking/hiking/outdoor stuff that I rarely did in Atlanta bc it was too hot there. This mindset turned out to be a nice forcing function to push me to do things that I wouldn't have done otherwise. Like, you're right by the ocean so you might consider taking up scuba, surfing, kayaking.

* Feel free to contact me. My email is in my profile.

>Any advice? General or specific, I'll take anything.

Be careful of the homeless and the drug addicts. Spread some cash around the homeless that frequent where you live so that they aren't hostile. Don't step on any poop, and keep an eye out for needles when you walk.

Oh and leave your car unlocked with the windows down. Don't leave any valuables in your car. Don't venture outside at night unless you are streetwise and know how to handle yourself.

I hope you like dudes.

First, realize that almost all advice you get in your life will be awful.

Second, say yes to any and every social invitation and opportunity you have.

Assume you are moving with a job in hand. Find someone, or a group, you click with at work and roommate with them. Don't live solo.

Don't work for big tech. Find a startup.

My take on the job market is that the Bay Area could be in recession (FAANG is firing, VC investments seem to be retreating) but normal employers in the rest of the country are struggling to fill positions.

Why SF, I see a lot more action happening in NYC these days than SF.

this thread is hilarious as hell, best of luck op

Be gay.

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