Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?
A while ago lots of people moved out. Due to the current AI fad people came back (?). Does it still matter to be there and in what circumstances?
There is an incredible amount of tacit knowledge in this city that is hard to really internalize until you are actually here and living through it. I think programs like https://www.siltahouse.com/home take a great advantage of these things.
There's a lot of counter intuitive things about early stage that you can't really convey in a blog post, or you may not even believe until you see it yourself up close from people. The open minded attitudes and culture around risk is something that you can really internalize when you are around other people who give you the correct social proof.
Is this all things you can get other places? Sure! It may not matter as much as it did 10 years ago, but you will have a hard time not getting a positive experience out of living, working, or building in the Bay Area.
[1] people have said this since the beginning of time about everything anyways
Never lived in the Bay Area, but even when Bay Area people visit or show up in my career orbit, the difference is pretty massive.
Especially when compared to Canadians on risk taking. Bay Area will spend a week to try something. Canadians will take a few months to consider it.
Even observing from afar, it is pretty evident why Canadians tend to lose.
Never heard of this before, interesting! Can you direct me to some sources or YouTube video about this? I'd love to learn more.
Couple charts. Disposable income vs house costs, USA then Canada. https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/s/SIRo14xudI
Relatedly, debt to income ratios, Canada vs USA. https://ritholtz.com/2013/10/household-debt-to-income-ratio-...
So Canadians like to spend too much for housing, live credit and thus don't invest. Why do they do that and does that matter? Well, we do that mainly because house appreciation isn't taxed as income (risk aversion in action) and it does matter because it crowds out investment in things businesses use to make money.
WSJ has argued that this is the second leg of the crisis: we can't earn our way out of it, because our productivity is poorer than the USA, at 71%. https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadas-poor-productivity-has-r...
Thirdly, Canada is cold and as a result we need a lot of energy to exist. Are energy prices declining? https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...
Forthly, I'm sure you're aware that the USA is deeply in debt and that the higher interest rates to combat inflation are pinching the ability of governments to operate. What you may not be aware of is that our Central Bank does whatever the Federal Reserve does in terms of rates about 70% of the time. If they did something different, bond traders would likely be able to destroy our currency. So we are trapped right now, hoping inflation ends real soon.
Lastly, to paraphrase a Mexican saying:Canada is far from God and too close to the United States. Our best and brightest leave to make 30% more in America, where the language and culture is very similar. We have been watching American television our entire lives. We don't have a market of 350 million people to sell to, and out government protected oligopolies are not able to compete in the USA. Our banks are making a push, but that's likely to be regional In America and not national.
This sums up the business climate. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1013522
Personally, I've also noticed that because there are basically 4 companies to work for in any vertical, and there are fewer tier 1 cities to work in in Canada, middle management here is mostly concerned about avoiding mistakes rather than competing and excellence.
But I don't really know America, it seems like it's a hyper competitive place where you don't get to take your vacation time, and heaven help you if you really need a doctor and you are poor. Every country sucks in its own way.
Also the consumer climate really. As despite all the regulatory barriers, Wind got through in the end.
And nobody was interested. Consumers didn’t flock to the product.
Don’t know what Molson is? Well, the book argues that you would and should, but for our risk averse culture.
I'm sure some of it depends on what you're trying to accomplish in life, but since you didn't specify I'll answer for myself (someone who just wants to do work I enjoy for a really solid upper-middle-class paycheck and retire early)—no, you don't need to be in the Bay Area.
EDIT: To give some concrete numbers, San Jose and San Francisco represented ~180k of the nation's ~1650k software developers in 2023 [0]. That's ~10% of all US-based software developers and ~0.6% of all software developers in the world [1].
[0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-many-software-developers-...
So plainly true it feels weird to read.
Moving away from the Bay Area was the second best thing I've ever done for myself financially, because once you have the skills and network there's not much gains to be had by staying in that dystopian hellhole where the only positive quality of life is the weather.
Eesh that’s laying in on thick. SF is clearly not your cup of tea but no need for this type of hyperbole. I happen to enjoy the Bay Area, and S.F. in particular. People have different things they are interested in.
You wouldn’t want me to hyperbolically rant on about how many other areas of the country are concrete mcdonaldified wastelands. Or whatever place you moved to, some people would rant about how bad it is.
I've lived in a number of different places in the country and the Bay Area is hands down the worst, and it always baffled me how many people that lived there thought it was the peak of American living. I'm sorry that most places you don't need to worry about stepping over needles and human excrement in the streets. But there are some pretty mountains that catch on fire only every couple of years, so I guess it's alright?
This statement seems snidely directed and presumptuously inaccurate. And almost intentionally so as the viewership is biased towards tech salaries I.e. plenty of ability to travel.
I’d say it’s strange that it needs mentioning that there are places that exist outside the financial district/soma in SF and the bay, but it’s not actually strange if the only thing one thinks about said areas and neighborhoods outside the financial district is that they are the undesirable wildfire zone.
grass is always greener on the other side, and its Going to be a rude awakening if fire in distant hills is one’s notion of bad weather events.
Also fire isn’t just a CA thing anymore. A neighborhood in CO was wiped out, NY was blanketed in smoke. Hurricanes are making the Florida home instance market collapses. That’s just scratching the surface.
SF isn't the Bay Area. Traditionally SF wasn't considered part of Silicon Valley at all (these days depends who you talk to and when and where they got immersed here).
> I've lived in a number of different places in the country and the Bay Area is hands down the worst
I somewhat don't actually like the Bay Area TBH. Every few years I look into leaving. I go through all possible options and their pros and cons and, depressingly, every time I find that Silicon Valley is still the best place in the US.
It's not any one thing, but I have not found any place that is either ok or reasonably good about everything without having any terrible deal-breakers.
Care to share what you consider "deal-breakers" because I've found parity for less money, pretty much everywhere I looked.
Well that's going to be very personal preference so not sure if my criteria is useful to anyone else. But for me I must be within ~2hr drive of the ocean, which limits me to coastal areas. And I won't tolerate any below freezing weather nor days above 100F. And I need the area to have sufficient concentration of tech work that changing jobs (for both me & partner) without having to move houses is pretty easy.
The irony that people would leave a large, wealthy state full of exceptionalist attitudes for a similarly large, wealthy, exceptionalist state was not lost on me!
But I maintain close personal and business ties to CA and my networks there and won’t live long term more than a days drive away. Maybe I’m part of the problem.
This is what I object to: the comparison to acting or investment banking tends to exaggerate the centralization of tech jobs.
If you want to be in a film and aren't in LA then you don't really want to be in a film, because a solid majority of the jobs are there. I imagine the same is true for investment banking and New York.
San Jose and San Francisco, on the other hand, represented ~180k of the nation's ~1650k software developers in 2023 [0]. That's ~10% of all US-based software developers and about 0.6% of all software developers in the world [1]. Not a tiny percentage, but nowhere close to Hollywood's dominance in film.
[0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-many-software-developers-...
And this is the condescending attitude that makes the 99.4% of us who aren't overpaid Silicon Valley types resent the valley.
According to the BLS stats above the median salary for a software engineer is $130k, which is nearly double the median household income in the USA and more than enough to enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle in most areas of the US.
But sure, feel free to look down on those of us who choose to stop optimizing for wealth after realizing we already are earning in the top 10%.
That being said, I essentially have no connections or network in the Bay Area. I've worked for companies where most of my peers are not in the Bay Area. This puts me at a huge disadvantage for continuing to level my career. I'm largely subject to the whims of remote. While COVID dramatically increased the number of remote positions, it also exponentially increased competition for those positions.
I recently left to be a stay-at-home-dad, but I'm dreading the day I attempt to get back into the workforce. I just don't really see it being feasible.
I just left my job. I don’t look forward to finding another remote one when I start looking again.
What I did, and do recommend, is to do a little bit of consulting. I rarely did more than a few hours a week (and on some months nothing). But having a consulting company and a few real customers meant that companies saw me as legitimately self-employed (and I was, even if very low hours) instead of unemployed.
(Did it make a difference? I don't know. But can't hurt.)
Software is certainly everywhere in every industry and thus every city, town and village (eating the world as the saying goes). No need to be in SV to work in software.
The kind of jobs used to be very different in SV. Here you didn't just work on software development, you worked in legendary tech companies. HP (back when that was a good word), Sun, SGI, Netscape and many thousands smaller but equally exciting tech shops.
Things have changed though. Now there aren't many actual tech companies in SV. Of all the big names, only Apple is a tech company. The others are either advertising or social nonsense or movies or sales. They use tech but don't sell tech, so they are not tech companies.
Founding a tech startup and getting VC funding? Working at a FAANG or tech unicorn? Maxing your compensation? Easily job hopping? Being part of large social or professional networks centered around tech? Working on the bleeding edge of the industry? Yes to all of these.
Working a software engineering job that will pay significantly better than the median salary in the area and let you have a good standard of living and a good overall life? No, if you have adequate skill you can achieve that anywhere in the world.
If you wanna buy a house with a yard and the above doesn’t draw you, it’s probably not for you.
Edit: and fresh produce at the farmers markets!
The art scene in the bay is actually really bad.
That's what I miss about Philadelphia. Actually, probably the only thing I miss, because there are a lot of problems in Philly, too. But the indie hacker scene in Philly was amazing. We had a lot of intermingled circles of entrepreneurs, hackers, and artists . If you wanted to get something done and make it a cool, weird thing along the way, you just had to show up at the hackerspace with some parts and beer.
I'm in the DC area now, since I got married 10 years ago. Nothing like that here. Lots of extremely intelligent people, but no desire to Just Make Things. Everyone's got their career plan, retirement plan, home ownership plan. And none of it involves just hanging out and fucking around with a soldering iron.
Philly definitely has more of a creative class than DC, but there’s still things happening in DC.
The only cities in the US with a superior art scene than San Francisco are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and maybe Chicago.
Washington DC, Houston, Marfa, Pittsburg, and Santa Fe lag behind San Francisco.
The other cities all have some sort of semi livable areas for artists, SF has nothing to offer in that regards.
Likewise, people in South Bay lack the sophistication to appreciate anything other than a vanity license plate on a sport car.
The weather though..
I like Pittsburgh (CMU alumni here), but only a few weeks a year.
The weather is bad enough that I consider it basically uninhabitable if you have seasonal depression. South Bay is a cultural wasteland but god damn the weather is 10/10.
The biggest drawback beyond the weather is the coke/steel plants regularly put shit in the air far in excess of EPA guidelines and the water supply is about two steps above Flint in quality.
Overall, PGH is amazing if you can live with the climate - but if you can’t, you can’t.
I've worked for prestigious, recognizable, tech companies and local no-name companies.
As long as you're in a metro area with at least a million or two people, there'll be enough software engineering and data center business to go around.
Most of my teams over the last few years have all been geo-distributed, anyways, so its much less common for everyone to even be in the same place, anyways, even if you live in the bay area.
Successful is a weird definition. Most people in Bay Area, like the rest of the world are in the cycle of making ends meet.
If you have great founder friends, great. But it’s not a given from the law of averages.
It is a disfunctional city, and continues to be successful despite being disfunctional.
In general I think it's limiting if you confine your job search to one area. (After all, your odds double if you try two different locations.) And there are other large tech cities -- Seattle, New York, etc.
There is also the possibility of a telecommuting position -- though more of those tend to be "hydrid" than 100% remote. Still, more of those than there were five years ago.
At least from my experience job searching, Seattle does not have the startup ecosystem that the Bay has. Not even close. I'm sure if you want to work in aerospace or military contracting then Seattle's a great option for startup jobs. But otherwise you're locked into Big Tech (something I'll never go back to).
New York is an amazing spot because there’s just so much more density and diversity that there’s a bazillion more niche communities doing all sorts of stuff, including tech scenes, tech-art stuff, whatever you want.
You need to decide what you’re looking for, and if you can find it wherever you already are.
- NYC (still the hub) - Chicago (although that's declining in my opinion) - South Carolina (lots of banking tech jobs there) - Austin, TX (similar to SC above) - Miami (crypto friendly and a large hedge fund just moved its HQ there)
I'm curious, where?
I've lived in Columbia, SC for thirteen years, not that I'm looking to switch jobs, just interested to know what I've apparently overlooked here!
If you have a job, it less important. If you want to change jobs it still valuable. More and more employers want folks near by.
And this comes from someone who is patently not a job hopper.
It doesn’t mean you have to move to the Bay Area, nor does it mean you can’t find a great job outside of a tier 1 city (Seattle, NYC, etc). However, the amount of opportunity is drastically different.
I am debating moving from another country to it to be closer to executives on my company (L1 possibly green card), but still unsure, I make very good money where I am and would make very good money in Bay Area. But my life is already pretty settled on a big tech company..
From reading online, doesn't look like the best place to raise a family, and costs are obscene even for high paid employees. Traffic also feels like would be a big negative impact on my life if I moved.
Moved away, and now deer eat everything nonmetallic, 110 degree summers and at times, a couple of feet of snow. 12 miles to downtown and 50 miles to an Indian or Thai restaurant, Whole Foods, and the VA medical facility.
Would love to move back and reinvent the enshittified web. Will gladly leave the snow shovel, chainsaws and bear spray behind.
The differences seemed small initially, but they add up. I find people are bolder - less risk adverse. The energy is about 4x London, the scale 10x (the USA market is 10x more valuable vs the UK: 5x the population worth 2x the dollars). Genuine success is important, you cannot arse about pretending to work (like MANY Brits do).
It was a move to a much worse work-life balance for me.
The downsides are significant, lack of quality art and culture. You earn 2x or 3x but everything from cheese to housing is 2x to 3x more expensive. The Bay Area is geographically isolated, no more weekend tries to Paris or Berlin. You’ve got Hawaii and LA (a 8h drive to a city uglier, more polluted and dirty than Delhi). Skiing is Tahoe at $160/day, whereas London gives you access to dozen of much better resorts at a fraction of the price. Tahoe was especially disappointing.
I drove through SF last week and there was only one billboard that wasn’t about a GenAI company selling a CRM system.
Nevertheless, it's safer and more diverse here. The people you meet seem to have more interesting conversations in general.
Being poorer also keeps us humble. "Hungry dogs run faster"
It also gets boring. Everything is now way more expensive. Disposable income gets consumed way faster now than before. There's not much diversity compared to other metropolitan areas that American expats have moved to.
Make filthy money there first, then live the life you want elsewhere.
Otherwise, the cost of living is ample reason to stay away.
What's other US city that has a concentration of tech companies that, in your opinion, aren't aimless as you so described?
There’s truly no other place you can have a pick of such a wide variety of social parasites to work for.
"Listen, just put Kansas City or Nashville or somepin'. It don't mattah. None a' this mattahs."
On the entrepreneurial side, it's like these WeWork single-founder startups from the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Canada, NY) who are doing everything from crypto bro stuff to trying to build tech for acquire-hire, flying through engineers and designers to do so. On the enterprise side it's mostly companies servicing all these: Rippling, WeWork, Vercel, cloud providers, payment providers, Salesforce.
The entire Bay Area is getting calmer and more neighborhood-like: The peninsula and East Bay seem nicer than ever. A lot of SF people moved to Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and towns like Redwood City are really shaping up into lovely suburbs. Where I live (Upper Haight, SF) the old school skateboard/pizza/weed/fashion vibe is coming back, the Dead Heads are not a very strong influence anymore but there are some, kinda feels like a little 90s pocket here, but we lost a lot of live music and a lot of culture. The whole city seems to have lost a lot of music, restaurants, and entertainment - it's overall pretty boring right now. There's more spontaneous live music in Santa Cruz or peninsula. There's a pretty strong homeowner and gardening vibe in a lot of neighborhoods of SF, the Slow Streets thing is making it feel more suburby in areas. Bernal is stuck up beyond belief, just like before but multiply it, it's gotten more sophisticated, same homeowners up there as before, Good Life still there, remodeled but the same basically. Noe is strange, the babies are no longer babies but now giant 10 year olds, feels like an urban kid-ran neighborhood over there - strong cul-de-sac family vibes. More surfing and skimboarding at beaches than I remember from 10+ years ago, more action sports in general - skateparks have improved. Bike lanes and roads have improved, overall crime is lower and things are cleaner all over the Bay Area except for the classic bad spots of East Bay.
I've lived here for most of my life so it's hard to compare it to other places, I would say it's maturing and improving and I expect the West Coast in general to fill out like the East Coast over the next 100 years, so I take that into consideration with the overall growth trend. It's still very much a place of building and construction and growth. Though as I say this I've seen more "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs on buildings than ever before within SF - I think the surrounding areas are growing more than the city, the city is overall somewhat boring and quiet but I love it.
Back then, one recruiter or another called me about once every three weeks about some opportunity or other. People I worked with who had moved on would call to see if I was interested to join them. Or if I thought it was time to move on, there were many dozens of former coworkers I could call for leads. Those interviews were perfunctory -- that contact had already sold me to their boss, so it was really more about convincing me to join their company.
In 2004 I moved to Austin and things have been very different. I've never had a single recruiter call, and if I did decide to change jobs, I would have far fewer options than when I lived in SV. I'm nearing retirement age so I don't expect to ever interview again.