Zed Shaw on SF vs NYC | Hacker News Reader

Zed Shaw on SF vs NYC

zedshaw.com

75 pointsgthank91 comments

But isn't the end result the same? Joining an existing startup as an engineer is NOT financially beneficial. Just do the math:

An average post-series A startup has 10% chance of success and an average acquisition price is around $50M.

Now, when you're joining as an engineer how much do you get in equity? Much less than just 1%, yet you're losing a lot of potential earning power and, most importantly, you're investing 100% of your raw intellectual potential in it (good startups suck it all out of you). So... while at a startup you are: not working on your own projects, not making as much $$$ as you could have, and the payoff is what? 10% chance of making $50K in 3 years?

He never said he was looking for an exit, he's looking to immerse himself in the culture.

If he can't find culture in NYC, he's not going to find it in SF.

> But isn't the end result the same?

Zed thinks so: Now obviously the SF companies are all really looking for an employee to make them rich. The difference is in their approach and how they don’t say it so blatantly or in such a gigantic douchebag way.

Crap dude you just summed my life up in a paragraph. 3 start ups, all sold and the most I ever pulled was 100k for my efforts. I did however make a comparable wage to developers in established businesses so it did not hit me so hard in the earning potential; but you are right about the intellectual capital spent. Once the risk of failure starts to subside the amount investors are willing to part with follows a similar curve. If you are going to get in, it has been my experience that, ground floor is the only place that you will see any significant chance of getting to anywhere better than well off or comfortable.

Being part of three successful startups must have taught you a ton, though. Certainly more than being a drone.

Most assuredly, I absolutely don't want anyone to take away that it was a completely negative experience. Those where some of the best times in my career. Every change you make, you can literally feel the money role in and you are in complete control of the decision making process. You are in it together and it is a conquer the world attitude. The best friends I have ever made, where bonds built in those companies. That said, I think the parent posters comment is often overlooked by the inexperienced, in the quest for the one hit. I am now a VP of a fortune 100 company due to the experience I gained in those companies and my track record of hitting it 3 times. I just wanted to highlight that even upon success, if the timing of entry is not right you may only walk out with some good resume fodder and enough to float you to the next gig.

The math is right but misses the point: to learn how to do your own startup. To learn from what the founders are doing right and wrong, and to start building up your own network of contacts, in preparation for striking out on your own.

Plus if you're not really into the premise of the startup you're working for, you should probably quit right away. And if you are really into it, well, then, that's worth something right there.

I give it six months before he starts whining about how everyone in SF is a "douche" and fuck them because I'm the genius who wrote Lamson... whatever.

+34, seriously? Apparently HN is like a high school girl clique that's decided Zed Is Bad.

HN is more than 34 people.

He's right, though, +34 was way too high ... must've struck a nerve.

No, we've just decided that Zed Is Predictable.

Well, I've never understood the Zed -hate. People say he's a prick, but people saying that doesn't make it true.

To me, he seems like an intelligent and nice person. His writings are often blunt, but how often is he blunt and wrong?

As for being predictable, I predict that the prediction "he starts whining about how everyone in SF is a "douche" and fuck them because I'm the genius who wrote Lamson" is wrong. Your comment, on the other hand, looks like you believe it will happen.

Why is this on HN's front page? :(

As with the last post of Zed, it is in the front page because most people here know Zed and are probably interested in what he does. I suggest you to flag the link if you find it inappropriate, it is more effective.

I don't know Zed, and I'm not interested in the minutiae of his life.

Ah, I see from Wikipedia, that he wrote a web server in Ruby. Wow.

Lol: ("This is not a post about Zed Shaw...")

Such a self-negating post would not prove Tarsky's Theorem but it would demonstrate the impossibility of halting Zed Shaw posts...

I've been reading lots of symbolic logic lately...

I'm not sure what you're getting at but it's Tarski not Tarsky.

echo $zeds_blog >> $hacker_news

Even more worrying is that it's still at #2 even on news.ycombinator.com/classic which shows it's not just the new people messing it up... (though, conversely, that sorta legitimizes it being here)

whoa! I never heard of "classic." What is it, and how did you find it?

Classic shows the home page as it would appear without votes from people with accounts less than a year old. pg added it about 3 months ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271

Pretty cool. It would be nice if there was a link to it, perhaps one the profile screen (or whatever he calls the screen I get when I click my username).

You know, I ask the same thing when the more personal stuff I write goes to #1. I can see my more technical and/or inflammatory posts hitting #1, but this is seriously a fairly mundane travel journal.

Anyway, I don't post these (or anything I write) to HN so if this is tops on the front page just chalk it up to a slow news day or a possible trend worth exploring.

Zed

"but the dingiest place in SF was cleaner than the cleanest streets near me"

Keep in mind that the shit that you stepped over on the sidewalk was probably not from dogs (if you were near Market street).

I upvoted because being an NYC native (well, after 5 years here) it is always interesting to see what I think I may be missing out on by not being in SF.

Honestly, I think he's spot on with SF being cheaper, cleaner and better tech scene than NY. Where NY wins out is that it is actually refreshing that not everyone is consumed by startup culture here, yet there are still people (buglabs, drop.io) building interesting companies. Also, NYC feels more vibrant compared to SF but my experience is highly limited to an 8 month stint in SF '05 and I wasn't working at a startup.

How about we cut the negativity and share other experiences of people that have relocated?

Along the same line, given that YC is based there, and you have to move there to participate in it, any story about someone's experience in moving there is definitely of interest to me. My guess is that's the primary reason its of interest to others as well.

Zed writes reasonably well and captured aspects of the experience that I find intriguing, so I found the entry worthwhile.

I hope he continues to write about his move, and personally don't mind at all if additional entries get posted here for discussion in the future.

If you care about comparing SF and NYC, I wouldn't trust somebody's account of a weekend visit. I almost laughed out loud at some of it. "Awesome summer weather" and SF are fundamentally incompatible.

And Zed apparently doesn't actually like Mexican food, he just likes burritos, as that's the only thing you can only find in SF.

Now he is spot on regarding Muni. Actually, probably lucky he found a bus at all. Muni vs MTA alone probably makes it worth moving to NYC.

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

- Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, but he never said it. Who knows who did.

I don't know why people don't like the summer weather in San Francisco. Sure, if you live on the ocean side or in Pacifica it can be foggy and cold but in other parts of the city like the Financial District, North Beach or the Mission it is really comfortable most of the summer (high 60s, 70s and sunny most days). If you like super hot weather then you just head down the South Bay or over to the East Bay and you can get plenty of 80s/90s throughout the summer.

It's pretty cold here in early summer -- I was wearing a sweater and a winter coat a few evenings last month. I just spent seven years in Seattle (aka the Gloomiest Place on Earth), and even I think it's a bit ridiculous to be wearing a winter coat in July. I also routinely run into tourists over by Giants Park who underestimated the weather, and who are frantically searching for warmer clothes.

That said, I like it here. But had I moved here from LA or anywhere with heat, I would have probably been sorely disappointed.

I'm enjoying my first SF (well, Emeryville actually) summer after three years in Sacramento, where "summer" means "90 straight 100+ days". I think it's nice that even on the hottest day of the year I can still walk around outside for an hour without feeling like I'm going to die of heatstroke.

Unless you're planning a day at the beach, I think "hot" is overrated (and I say that as a Sydney native).

Emeryville is a significantly different Micro Climate than San Francisco. There are even parts of the actual _city_ of San Francisco that have different weather patterns - and just go a little South down the peninsula, and it's like you are in a different State when it comes to the weather.

I used to live in SF's Financial District, and have also lived in NYC, and I must say I much prefer SF weather. The weather is boring (no seasons), but at least it doesn't every get freezing or disgustingly hot like NYC. Plus, if you ever want warmer weather, just drive out of the city or take the BART to Berkeley and you're there.

The weather is probably the thing I like most about SF, compared to NYC. Otherwise, SF is pretty boring, and I much prefer NYC (except for the likelihood that NYC will be a target of another major terrorist attack, at some point).

Same reason that your complaining about it is at the top of the discussion of the article - people thought it was worth voting up.

Personally, I thought this article was much more interesting than what Zed thinks about Django after using it for 2 hours (which was once also #1). As far as your comment, I don't think it adds much to the conversation at all. If I were a moderator, I'd delete this whole branch.

zed had the exact same thought:

"WTF. Why is my post about moving to SF #1 on HN? I need to write something that is worthy of that spot again."

(http://twitter.com/zedshaw/statuses/3363785875)

Because celebrity worship is endemic to modern western culture, of which we are all a part of.

It isn't the domain of stay-at-home-moms and teenagers exclusively, even if you thought we were too smart for that tripe. :)

The only thing worse than crap on the front page is complaining about the crap on the front page.

No, even worse is the meta-complaining about other people complaining about complaints.

Vicious circle, heal thyself.

Let them play!

Because we can't downvote articles.

Am I the only one who doesn't give a shit about Zed's migration?

Being a New Yorker who wants to do the exact same thing that Zed is doing now (not because he's doing it, of course), it does interest me somewhat.

Me too. I was checking out SF a few weeks ago. Froze my ass off at night (50F!). People in SF are 10X nicer than NYC. Even the homeless. Food is not as good, though the high-end fancy places were ok. Housing appears to be half my insane rent in NYC. I'll inevitably move to SF when the economy improves.

"More importantly, the general feel of the technology scene in SF has almost zero douchebag in it."

Good to hear that someone's trying to change that.

"I went down to the Mission to get some Mexican food, because there is absolutely no good Mexican food in New York. None."

Wrong. Sunset Park in Brooklyn has excellent Mexican food. I say this as a person who recognizes the insane subjectivism of "good" Mexican food. Books could be written on how Americans judge US made Mexican food and I really do think there is no deterministic way to understand what goes into each persons position on what is good and not good when it comes to a burrito or enchilada.

But I will say this; if you go to Sunset Park in Brooklyn NY, you will find quality tacos and tortas. Probably the burritos won't be as good, but I personally find the burrito to be an uninspired dish. I've had good enchiladas and excellent tamales in Sunset Park, too.

To be fair as well, the burrito (as we know it in SF) is either a San Francisco or LA based creation. You're not going to find that in Mexico.

Yes and no, it looks like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrito#History

Looking at that picture made me suffer though... I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd probably be happy just to get some Taco Bell. Things are that bad here in Padova.

El Rio Grande on 39th and 3rd. The best margaritas in the city! Two of those and you wont be able to tell if the food is good or not. Although the food is pretty tasty.

Agreed. I'm 20 blocks south of Sunset Park--that's the go-to place for Mexican in Brooklyn.

Interesting to see a New Yorker's view of SF, but why do we care? Who is Zed Shaw and why is he important?

I'm reminded about something I read regarding human interaction in general: "It's not who has the most interesting to say that's most popular, it's who's the loudest."

Mongrel, "Rails is a Ghetto", Lamson; in that order.

You know Cheers—"where everybody knows your name" and all that? The Internet is like that, for some people: a third place[1], a place that people want to feel sociable and at home at the same time. Celebrities are the plague of third places; because people rarely actually know the people they meet in a standard third place (unlike Cheers), certain people—the celebrities of the individual third place—are gravitated toward as topics of conversation, because they are "safe" topics of conversation that most people there are sure to have something to say. Beauty parlors have magazine-cover celebrities; we have ranting-douche celebrities.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Place

I lived in Bayview, north of Candlestick, for a couple months. My sense was that it was the worst neighborhood in San Francisco. It didn't even come close to the worst of Chicago. How does someone from NYC manage to get intimidated by SF? I kind of don't believe this happened.

San Francisco is too small for genuinely dangeous neighborhoods, and the whole area is so expensive that even Oakland is viable for family housing.

Depends on what time of day - while it's true the bad neighborhoods in SF aren't as large as those in other major cities, I would certainly not want to end up in a Norteño neighborhood of the Mission late at night. It's also possible he got on the 53 and accidentally ended up in the Potrero Hill projects.

How could Bayview trump the Tenderloin? Or for that matter, Emeryville (if we're counting the East Bay?)

Here's a map of SF crime by district.

http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/projects/sfcrime/

I don't know this for sure, but I'd bet that vice and drug crimes jack the stats up for the Tenderloin. Also, this is 1998; 10 years could change a whole lot in SF. But I'm even more certain that 10 years has made SF more hospitable, not less.

How does someone from NYC manage to get intimidated by SF?

Have you been to NYC over the past 10 years? Minneapolis has had a higher violent crime rate. NYC is like romper room for adults these days. In addition to having actual worse crime stats, SF also feels sketchier due to the huge weirdo lurker population. That said, I do wonder which scary bus Zed was taking.

I used to work in the Bayshore. Aside from the night I had to find some clothes for the naked hooker that got dumped in my work's parking lot by a Suge Night looking dude in an SUV, nothing bad ever happened.

http://www.burbed.com/2006/05/23/crime-rate-comparison-san-f...

Re: "people are crazy"

San Francisco is less than twenty miles long. It's very easy to get to the other side of town in a short period of time. NY has neighbourhoods that are much more dangerous than shady parts of the Mission/Tenderloin (where he likely ended up) and even Bayview. It's just that it's much harder to stumble into them.

In further news, I plan on eating a sandwich for lunch.

"NYC constantly stinks like dried vagina in the summer."

i read zed for gems like that. hilarious. but, imho, nyc does have shortcomings when put up against sf, especially in the tech space. i live in manhattan now and although there are a handful of people/groups that do hackernews type stuff they are few and far between. mostly those that do play here are along the lines of the job zed made example of in his post.

Not sure who you have been meeting. But you should check out the hackers and founders meetup. There are of course a few financial people, but overall a great group of interesting like minded people. There are people in NYC doing interesting stuff, you just have to weed through a lot of crap to find them. But they do exist... If your interested in details for the meet up, shoot me an email.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the continent.

I just did the opposite move, from SF to NYC.

The Mexican food in SF is very specific - Burritos. Burritos are as much Californian food as they are Mexican. You'll be hard pressed to get a decent burrito in most of Mexico. You'll also be hard pressed to find a decent burrito outside of SF once you've lived there.

The burritos in NYC are a joke. However, tacos in NYC are fine. The mexican people in California are usually from California... home of the burrito. All the mexicans I've met in NYC are from D.F - where there are no burritos to be found, but there are tacos. You can get nopales with your taco in NYC, it's hard to get them in SF. Zed's right though... in general there's better mexican food in SF. However, NYC definitely is not the worst. Try getting mexican food in Wisconsin, for example.

The weather in SF is weird. It's kinda cold most of the time. When I was a kid in the midwest I used to watch skateboard videos featuring SF. I'd mimic the guys who wore a winter hat and a t-shirt. I was determined to be as rad as they were. My head got so hot, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't figure out how those dudes could do it. It all came together when I moved to SF. It's the only place in the world where it makes sense to leave the house in a winter hat and a t-shirt.

The weather in NYC is balls this summer, but I kind of like having an excuse to wear shorts for the first time in 5 years.

NYC is indeed dirtier overall. However, if Zed really wants to know where the part of San Francisco that makes god weep, it's 6th and Market. Human poo, needles, meth tweakers, etc. The lower tenderloin up the hill from that intersection is a also a horror movie.

Regarding sketchiness, the sketchy parts of SF are actually sketchy. NYC, not so much. I've been mugged twice in SF. Once right in front of my apartment. My roommate was beat up by three dudes for 18 dollars. The hells angels dude got mowed down right over where I used to live. 21st street is the dividing line between the Nortenos and Sorrenos... 2 guys got shot on the street in front of my startup, while I was at work. Note that this was Bryant street and 21st in the Mission... where tons of hipsters and software people live...in 2006. There are constant gunshots in the projects next to Hayes Valley, right up the street from everyone's favorite coffee shop, Blue Bottle. I moved to a "nicer" neighborhood, Cole Valley, and within months my house got broken into and my TV was stolen by a crackhead. Market street after midnight (or after noon, depending on the day) is like 28 days later or similar apocalyptic zombie movie.. and so forth. Don't get me started on Oakland.

In contrast, New York is so safe these days it's a joke. You have to try pretty hard to get to a bad neighborhood in NYC these days. I never thought I'd "go soft" by moving to New York, but I'm not looking over my shoulder for tweakers and thugs anywhere in manhattan. I left my bike locked up on the street in Brooklyn and nobody ganked my seat like they did in Berkeley. Etc.

Regarding tech, I haven't been here too long. I know Zed hates ruby, but we had a nycrb meetup at work, and it was much better than the ruby meetups I'd been to in SF. The people were really cool. I also thought the "lame" project email he received sounded like a fun project, and I work for a fashion company, so maybe I'm not as cool as Zed. I do miss TechShop in Menlo Park already, as well as all the South Bay weirdos who build robots and actually design circuits and work on network routing protocols and stuff like that. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent to that out here, but maybe I just haven't found it.

Yeah, I think SF has more dangerous places then I've ever been to in NYC. In fact, though I've travelled quite a lot around the US and around the world, I'd say that I've never felt more threatened than I was in parts of SF.

SF is kind of weird in that it has these micro-neighborhoods, where you could go from a quite nice, posh neighborhood to a junky hangout in the space of a block. In NYC the transition from neighborhood to neighborhood is much more gradual, so you've got more of a warning.

And Market St in SF is just insane. I have never seen so many homeless people in my life. It's like a homeless army. It's really quite sad.

I heard that at one point there was an actual proposal being considered by the SF government to round up all their homeless people and send them to Treasure Island.

I was coming off Market and heading towards California one day when I happened to look at a homeless guy. I mean it was just an innocent glance -- like anybody does all the time.

His eyes got big and round and he walked over to me and started screaming, at the top of his lungs. Every sort of paranoid delusion and profanity you could imagine: he yelled it right in my face.

I, of course, totally ignored him at this point. Lord knows what he would have done if I had confronted him.

He followed me all the way home -- about a half-mile. Screaming the entire time. I was very thankful to live in a secure apartment building!

Sadly, this same thing happened to me a few months later with a different guy.

SF is a beautiful city, but it has a lot of issues.

I honestly think many of those homeless people are suffering from quite serious mental illness. They are not on the streets by choice.

My wife studied sociology. She tells me that there was a big push like in the 1970s to let a lot of crazy people out on the streets. It was deemed to be better to have them on the streets than in institutions.

If that's true, I don't think it's worked out very well.

I think it was due to budget cuts to social services across the board. That included closing a lot of asylums.

I've heard both that it was due to budget cuts and I've heard that it was due to well-meaning activists who were pushing for patient's rights. Honestly I never dug into it to figure out what really happened.

Whatever happened, it's a sad state of affairs.

same here. just moved back to NYC from SF (after leaving NYC for SF about 3 years ago for a startup). SF was nice, but boring. just walking around the city, its not as alive.

as for burritos, you are right. i totally miss those. the best i've found in NYC so far is http://www.yelp.com/biz/uncle-moes-burritos-new-york .. if only they had the same tight foil roll that they do in SF.

I think one of those guys is from Watsonville, so they don't pack it as tight and put on too much sour cream.

NYC is still plenty dangerous, just not anywhere you've been yet. It's such a different city than San Francisco that it's almost impossible to compare their safety in any general way. But for someone like you, who probably lives and works in Manhattan, you'll likely be more safe than you were in San Francisco. Just don't take this safety for granted or think of it as a joke. NY is a much bigger city than SF and bad stuff happens even in the nicest neighborhoods.

Here's an illuminating map: http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map

Although vastly different in size, NYC and San Francisco are the most closely related cities in the USA when it comes to urban density. It's not that much of a stretch to compare the two. A big difference is that in San Francisco it's very easy to wind up in a bad neighborhood. Some of the worst neighborhoods are right in the middle of the city. In New York, it's hard to wind up in a bad neighborhood, unless you live there. This is a return to NYC for me and it's interesting to see how much safer it is than it was even 10 years ago, when it was already much safer than the 1980s...

There is, in fact, good Mexican food in NYC--at the Red Hook ball fields on weekends in the summer.

http://nycfoodguy.com/2009/05/06/redhookballfieldsintroducti...

http://events.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/dining/reviews/23unde.h...

Mexican food is only good in Texas, London is more expensive than NYC, and the SF weather is the nicest of all.

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock.

There are really good taquerias in the Mission.

a one page comparison of NYC vs SF, blurgh...

Based on a four day visit rolleyes

Almost every time I visit a new place I want to move there, then I hang out for a few days and miss either New York or Sydney and realize that I'm perfectly content with my home(s).

He's right about the Mexican food in NYC, just horrible. But then all the Mexican stands are run by Chinese because the Latinos run the pizza parlors.

Meh, you can't get California style Mexican food but you can definitely get some great tacos.

Let's rename this site to Zed Shaw's Hacker News.

one could argue this guy doesn't get NY. (by making almost the same arguments that is)

Wish you all the best Zed.

Something negative and irrelevant that doesn't add to conversation about this link and somehow says I hate Zed Shaw so I sound like I'm a cool rebel too

Joking. Was a good read. Also, some of you need to read to the bottom to the 'Clue mean in' part.

Who is this guy? the next Anthony Bourdain? come one...

"More importantly, the general feel of the technology scene in SF has almost zero douchebag in it."

++0

Almost everything I read about NYC seems to reinforce my prejudices against it. :)

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