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Comment by kacy | Hacker News Reader

Is it time for this soon-to-be computer science grad to move to the Valley? Is this a good or a bad thing for new grads?

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If you're looking for a first job then probably yes.

Quality of life for a young, single male in the Valley is pretty low though. After 10 years in the Bay Area I'm moving to NYC where women actually exist.

'Sunnymale'; 'Man Jose'. (Well /I/ laughed when I heard them :) )

I almost thought I wrote that.

When you get to NYC, lemme buy you a beer.

In the Valley maybe. San Francisco proper is filled with women and has a great quality of life on par with, but different from, NYC.

I did this. If you are a single, straight guy, NYC is indeed better for dating. I didn't find dating in San Francisco to be completely horrible, just kinda weird. For example, in SF the women I would meet were very averse to 1-on-1 dating and everything had to be done as part of a group outing. On the other hand, I've gone on a lot of dates in NYC, but have not been successful in locating a crew of friends to hang out with. I guess one of the beneficial side-effects of "group dating" was that I ended up meeting a bunch of bros.

In San Francisco, he numbers were definitely not in favor of the male. I remember going into any bar in SF and it would be groups of say, 6 guys, sitting with 1 woman. Certain bars, like Toronado, did not have any women in them, ever. In NYC I've actually gone into a bar during happy hour and been the only male in there... an experience I've never had before in my life.

If you're smart and ambitious, I think yes, you should move here. The reason I make the advice conditional is that it's an expensive place to live; if you don't burn to work for a startup, you might be better off elsewhere.

My sense is that the demand is skewed toward the top end of the market, i.e., the best developers are getting much more difficult to find; I don't know if you'll see the same demand/supply imbalance at the entry level. Still, if you intend to get to be one of the best, this is the place to do it.

If you are looking for a big company job, it shouldn't be too hard to get one before moving. The burn rate on living expenses is pretty high out here unless you have a valley-sized salary too, so I recommend that. Apply to Google. :) You can always leave for a startup once your short-term finances are secure.

Or just rent a room in an apartment with roommates for $700/mo and don't get a car. Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.

$700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country. In Columbus Ohio that gets you a three story house with beautiful wood floors, or a furnished multi-room apartment in downtown Cincinnati. Only in the valley is that kind of expense living frugally, and it's something someone with a student's level of savings ought to take stock of before making the leap.

Really? ~$700/month gets you a two-bedroom apartment in parts of Portland, Oregon, but that seems to be around a minimum. The cheapest thing that I was able to find at one point was ~$500/month for a house-share w/ 7 other people.

That's a far cry from what you're talking about in Ohio, and I'm not even in the Valley, and the prices here aren't too far off from prices in Toronto, Ontario.

I'll also note that Ohio isn't known for being a prosperous part of the country either. I'm sure you could find cities around the country where the housing prices are similar to SF (though still maybe less).

In the valley, $700/month doesn't even get you a studio. It gets you half of a 1 bedroom.

That's true, but trying to illustrate how hyper-expensive prices in The Valley are by comparing them against prices in places that are ultra-low seems disingenuous (to me at least).

The post came off like it was implying that in The Valley $700/month is a bare-basement price, while everywhere else in the country it buys you a mansion and several servants.

The point is that it's probably a lot more expensive than what the poster is used to, and it's worth working somewhere that can give you some financial security for a while until you know the place.

"$700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country"

I find that hard to believe. Maybe in backwater Georgia. I happen to have some experience with US residents moving temporarily to Europe and they don't even blink at paying local market rate, with some mentioning that it's 'quite cheap compared to home'. Market rate here for a non-luxurious 2-bedroom apartment or semi-detached is 800-1000 USD. (they're not highly paid managers, either, line personnel).

I know a couple with a really nice 3 story house with an attic and full basement that might be worth 50k. Granted most of the housing in the US is in a much better area and is worth more than that, but most of the actual land in the US is poorly located and vary cheap.

What if I don't like 'goetta'?

Question your humanity. ;)

Uh, what? In the middle of the Midwest with literally one tech company to work for rent was $500/mo. You're calling $700/mo when you have choices where to work for at a 50%+ higher rate exorbitant? I think you need to step outside your normal boundaries a bit.

If you're splitting a one-bedroom in the midwest, you can easily do $200 per month, which is what $700 gets you in the valley.

Facebook and twitter are advertising companies too ;)

But at Facebook and Twitter the chance to become very wealthy within the next few years is substantially greater than at Google.

So why do you feel the need to call it an "advertising company"? Or was that a snarky anti-google comment? ;)

That wasn't me.

> Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.

I assume you're referring to Google.

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