When I moved to Santa Cruz (at the end of the nineties), my company eventually closed our office there and consolidated everyone into our office in downtown San Jose. No one wanted to work there, which I found weird at first (considering it wasn't very far away), but eventually understood.

San Jose was pretty shitty then (I have no idea what it's like now, but it sounds like it's basically the same).

I also didn't find anything redeeming about San Francisco (which I realize is a minority opinion), so I stayed in Santa Cruz as long as I could (before eventually relocating to DC after the company closed the rest of our offices out west).