Why Are Startups Flocking To SF? There’s No More Room In Silicon Valley
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
There are gigs on the Penninsula. Might as well be living in LA though. You drive to everything. Traffic is nuts. Biking puts your life and sanity at constant risk. Few areas have any charm to them, and none of those are remotely affordable. San Jose / Santa Clara proper are, apologies, pits.
San Francisco is walkable, has street life, functioning transit (well, for low values of "functioning"), is not strictly a tech ghetto in the way the Penninsula / South Bay are, and beats the heat in the summer (temps ~15-27C rather than 27 - 41C). You can walk to bars, clubs, museums, talks, art shows, or a gym after work, or reach it quickly on transit. When Muni breaks down, you can reasonably walk home.
Yes, housing cost per square foot is higher than elsewhere. That's what density means.
Also, if you're a Berkeley or Stanford grad, you probably prefer living in an exciting city like San Francisco instead of staying in suburbia. And even if you personally don't, your friends will, which means SF is still the place to be.
(I like dense urban locals)
German gun laws are better than Japan. Various Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Finland, etc) are a lot better. While in the city itself, I think NYC, DC, and Chicago laws are worse than many European countries on this one axis (obviously not the UK).
Seattle, Boulder, Portland, Boston, and Austin are worse than SF on tech startups (but still not bad), and on diversity/quality of food and culture, but with a lot fewer low scores for the other things.
The other thing is proximity. I can have most of the benefits of SF (which, for me, are "proximity to a few decent tech companies there"), with very little of the cost, in PA/MV. It's a drive or train ride, but not a flight. Still suffer from California state craziness (soon, 13% taxes on income and capital gains on top of federal, inflated property prices which also lead to inflated property taxes on an absolute level, crazy laws), but SFBA tech scene wins over that, at least for the next 5-10 years.
I do wish there were more shopping center/apartment complex combos, which would make for a nice place to live, play and drink without driving. OTOH, I like low rent, low taxes, fresh air, and small(er) government.
The reason is that this will cause infrastructure to be built. While I am (still) living in Europe and have very good infrastructure as someone interested into technology I fear that such developments could cause infrastructure to mainly be built at certain cities making everyone else living in some kind of desert, which could cause places to be underdeveloped, which leads to inequality, which then leads to unused potential, which is generally a problem that people see way too seldom these days. If you have people that are poor and stuff this means you loose potential, which means you waste the chance of someone bringing everyone forward, which maybe causes the next Einstein (just to make a point) to become a criminal instead of solving problems and creating amazing technologies.
One could see it as evolution. If the first humans had have bad luck, because of being at a bad spot, where intelligence wouldn't have helped at all, there was a drought period or just a predator or a virus, maybe even a meteorite they could have just gone extinct and could have exterminated a race that now can be considered dominant.
You could also see this with genes, like the one that causes western people to be able to drink milk. If the first individuals had back luck we probably wouldn't have that option now.
So every time you prevent someone from having the right infrastructure, eduction, society, life and if it's just the money you potentially prevent someone from solving the biggest problems.
Yes, one can argue that someone smart could make his life everywhere, but people need to learn this first. No matter how smart you are, if you just don't know you can do it that way, because you have no examples and no parents that tell you to make something out of yourself and instead society just reinforces you to do something different or bad you won't become a scientist, even if you'd have the potential for a Nobel Prize, unless something causes you to find it out, have self-esteem, etc.
So, it's okay to build nice technology cities and invest money in certain areas and places, but it would not only be bad, but also dumb if this makes you forget about the rest.
Singles enjoy the city life and those with families get more value in the East Bay with SF just being a BART ride away.
A couple of kids later, I live in the East Bay and with casual carpool to the City, the commute's a breeze; at this point, I would only consider a job on the Peninsula (or, God forbid, the South Bay) if there were no alternative in the City. And to be honest, if I were looking for space now, I might give Oakland a serious look: with the expansion of Silicon Valley into San Francisco, Oakland is no longer the remote outpost it was -- and rents are cheap cheap cheap...
Alameda or Jack London Square, and you can hop on a ferry.
BART gives you 5-15 minute headways from 5am until midnight/1 am, and is very, very reliable except when it isn't. Ferry service is less frequent but generally a nicer ride (more room, less riff-raff, much less scary crap in the upholstery, literally).
If you're ever near the Oakland Tribune Tower, ping me and I'll buy coffee/beer.
Still no late-night coffee (with wifi!) but that has a higher chance of springing up in the city than in Santa Clara.
I'm a little spoiled having lived in NYC directly across the street from a 24/7 Dunkin' Donuts.
Coming from the east (Michigan) I have been a bit disappointed by the dearth of 24 hour anything in the bay area. Particularly things like grocery stores and Target. This is complete speculation but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that a lot of places in the northeast (NYC included) have a history of round the clock shift work in manufacturing.
A minor inconvenience could lead to a lot less burn rate spent on rent.
Also, Palo Alto sucks.
Also, I was talking about renting in Fremont, which means you would be commuting on the Dumbarton in the anti-commute direction.
I also find the article unconvincing that companies are moving to San Francisco because they can't find real estate elsewhere. There are a lot of desirable ares in the peninsula other than downtown palo alto. And the fact is, San francisco is a very good place to locate right now.
We used to be located near google right on Crittenden near LinkedIn but had to move because google came into the market and theres no way we could match their bids. Now we have to move again because again google is coming into the market.
But still, we're looking at probably leasing the old facebook office space (speculation as my company hasnt formally disclosed anything other than that we're moving to palo alto)
I've long found this situation surprising, because there are quite a lot of engineers here, many of whom would likely take a pay-cut not to have to commute over 17 every day.
In other words, y'all phrase it as if these cities are very distinct and unique. All of Palo Alto, MV, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara can fit in the northern half of San Antonio.
SF vs. Silicon Valley is one thing.. but Palo Alto vs. Mountain view sounds like complaining about one side of the street vs. another.
Here is a fun word: 'microclimate.'
"Due to [SF]'s varied topography and influence from the prevailing summer marine layer, weather conditions can vary by as much as 9°F (5°C) from block to block." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate
The cultures, mentalities and lifestyles separating the two places could not be more different, yet they all would say they live in Houston. Tiny geographic distances can translate into massive cultural distances. The difference with the Bay Area is that they take the little names of their sub-regions and stick to them. I guess because they assume that people will know who they are or care?
That's the best I can figure. Every once in a while I run into someone talking about sub-regions of SF as if I really, truly have committed every last one of them to memory: "So we moved our company out to a house in Milpitas."
The cities all have enough of a distinct vibrant culture that locals can differentiate between cities. In another world, these town might just have been different districts in a super city (there is literally no separation between cities; buildings and suburbia go right up to the town borders), but each of the cities used to be separated by miles of orchards and farmlands before the tech boom, so each town had a chance to develop a slightly unique culture (if you think of the finches Darwin discovered in the galapogos islands, it's bout the same).
Because the entire area is suburbia, this leads to interesting transit situations. Ignoring public transit for a minute, estimating time to go from A to B becomes less of a function of distance, and more a function of how close each endpoint is to an arterial route. Sometimes,
let me throw some numbers at you, to help explain the situation.
I work in sunnyvale near highway 101 and maude. I am in the process of moving from Campbell (union and campbell ave, if you want to google map it) to cupertino (homestead and de anza). This reduces my commute from about 14 miles down to about 6 miles.
Geographically, I'm going from driving through 5 separate towns (campbell->san jo->sc->cupertino->sunnyvale), to literally just driving across sunnyvale (ok, and a 1/4 mile into cupertino as my car drives not as the crow flies).
From the campbell apartment to work with no traffic takes about 20 minutes if you tend to drive at the speed of traffic instead of the posted limit. If I were to commute during rush hour, this would be closer to a half hour or 40 minutes (i've only done it like twice because it is so horrid). From my new apartment to work will take about 10 to 20 minutes without traffic (slower roads, more stop lights, &c.). So despite cutting my commute distance by a factor of roughly 3, I only reduced my time spent commuting by about 0-50%.
For reference, going from my campbell apartment to my company's sf hq (soma) will take about 80 minutes when commuting during rush hour on public transit (door to door via the caltrain from tamien to sf).
And we haven't even talked about the differences in weather, yet, which due to microclimates can be 10 to 20 degrees different in the space of a few miles.
But ya, Texan neighborhoods might have their own style and some unique places, but not a totally distinct culture.
BTW, I'm in San Francisco for the first time this week, and it's an amazing city.