What's the dark side of Silicon Valley?

I am yet again reminded that I made the right decision to not go there.

I really think the Valley is coasting on its 90s mythos of being a hotbed of genuine creativity, real opportunity, and interesting cutting-edge culture. Today it sounds like an overcrowded, overbought, overpriced workaholic golden handcuff treadmill. The radical futurist "burning man" culture seems almost gone, having been priced out or workaholiced out-- no time to do interesting "maker" things or create culture when you're doing 80 hour work weeks. I know a few people who live there and they say the same.

A few replies mentioned Modafinil/Armodafinil and Adderall. I have nothing against nootropic stacking, but feeling like you have to take something just to keep up with the baseline is a sign of a deeply dysfunctional workaholic culture.

Many other large overhyped cities are not much better. If I wanted a mega-city I'd pick New York-- expensive as fsck but tons of culture and a deep, diverse economy. Also genuinely not needing a car cuts into the cost somewhat.

A lot of the downsides mentioned apply to startup culture no matter where you are. Fake mentors, incubator gators, networkaholics, and sanctimonious self-righteous sociopaths are major potholes on the entrepreneureal highway.

Where to go to do genuinely innovative work or really bootstrap a labor of love?

The former, I'd say hard to say. Maybe academia if you can handle a vow of poverty, or maybe an established company with a lot of R&D going on.

The latter? I'd look at smaller tech centers like Austin or Boulder, less overbought cities like Seattle, Chicago, and Toronto, or towns and smallish cities with a tech, R&D, geek, or major university presence or just a nice quality of life.

Some examples of the latter include Bloomington (IN), Lansing (MI), Ann Arbor (MI), Asheville (NC), Oak Ridge (TN), Orlando (FL), Roswell (NM), Santa Fe (NM), Huntsville (AL), etc. Note that a lot of these are in the South or the Midwest, not the trendiest of places.

Then there are total contrarian choices: Detroit (cheap real estate, interesting maker subculture) or bumblefuck nowhere.