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Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

Because you meet tons of talented engineers whenever you go for lunch, and they just need to cross the street and walk in to ask for a job.

Because you're around a ton of people who are interested in the same thing as you are. Caveat: If you're not interested in the things SF engineers are interested in, that means you're surrounded by masses of incredibly boring - to you - folks :)

Because that introduction you need to make things pop is super-easy compared to other places.

Doesn't mean you _have_ to start in SF, but for certain classes of ventures, it's the place that makes it the easiest.

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Subculture wise, SF is barely represented in computer graphics or high performance optimization circles, like gamedev or demoscene, arguably a class of field that produces top quality software engineers.

Yes. I'm not implying only SF produces great engineers. I'm saying that for a specific large set of problems, SF is swimming in great engineers for those problems.

For other problems, elsewhere may well be better. Gamedev, I'd say SoCal, NC, TX are all better places.(Though the studios have done a "great" job choking off the indie scene). If you talk high performance non-gfx, I'd go with NYC, HFT is pretty interesting.

But that's the whole point. Pick a place that has people who care about the thing you want to do. Because top engineers are almost always engineers who deeply care about the field they're in.

Any remote job listing gets thousands of applications, with dozens good candidates. I really doubt I could get decent engineer for $80k a year in SF.

> Caveat: If you're not interested ... incredibly boring

Everyone in SF has basically the same correct opinion.

And not just booring, but hostile. People in SF are really not that tolerant. Try to say that Dubai is more diverse, because it has many cultures, religions, people from Africa, India, Philippines... Or someone is not XYZ, but mixed race (whiter than me) and you will understand.

> I really doubt I could get decent engineer for $80k a year in SF.

If you did, they'd be a non-exempt employee, so you'd need to track and pay out overtime. A quick look puts the minimum non-exempt salary for jobs in California at ~$69,000.

Also, honestly? I expect you'd be hard-pressed to find a decent programmer for $80k/year in ANY major metro area in the US... post 2020, housing prices went NUTS across the country and aren't getting any less nuts.

(One of the big reasons I haven't moved out of San Francisco is that my ~50% less than "market rate" rent is not THAT much more than current rents in most other US cities. (Plus, most other US cities don't even pretend to have any sort of useful public transportation.))

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