Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy | Hacker News Reader

Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

businessinsider.com

383 pointsjacksonpollock948 comments

In the last 10-15 years San Francisco gained a ton of residents that didn't want to be there at all. They moved there because the job opportunities in tech were too hard to turn down.

I had some friends like this, they just never really liked the city. Now they're all leaving because their job is not making them stay. That's fine and I'm happy they have more choices now.

But there's a flip side to that. One of my least favorite part of San Francisco was actually that group of people! I loved SF and I was always bothered by the constant complaining by tech workers who were there semi-involuntarily. They weren't willing to give the city a chance and instead always wanted to change it to be more bland or more like somewhere else.

If a bunch of those people are now leaving and the rent is dropping a bit, all of a sudden I really want to come back. I also think the city will be easier to govern if more of the residents are there because it's where they actually want to live.

(Note: I was in SF for 6 years, left just before the pandemic for a temporary assignment in London)

I think most bigger cities have this same set of people, though I would guess SF has it more. I’ve certainly experienced it in Atlanta, and from former coworkers in Chicago/NYC/Boston as well. There are a lot of people who will complain incessantly about the place they live, and how it’s not as good as some other place.

A lot of those folks aren’t going to find happiness with their move but some will. The grass is always greener until you’re standing on it.

This story is insanely misleading though. Everyone here is talking about why the tech elite are leaving due to the quality of life when Keith Rabois specifically has like 3-4 IPOs he was an early investor in going public right now and makes no sense to stay in California in 2021 and pay state capital gains taxes on those sales.

Same with Elon Musk and Tesla’s absurd stock price. And probably a lot of other people given the hot IPO market.

Point is it’s so disingenuous for these people to say it’s because of SF or California when it has everything to do with taxes and not much else.

To blast the Bay Area and state which made them rich and then flee before they owe a penny is gross.

But their success has very little do with the tax burden imposed on them by the state of California (c.f. any number of Seattle-based companies).

I don’t know what you’re getting at but it isn’t my point.

And the other way to look at it is California is expensive because the opportunity to become rich is greater here than elsewhere.

> I don’t know what you’re getting at but it isn’t my point.

I can't tell if you're upset by their disingenuousness, or by their refusal to give a cut to the state. If the former, I sympathize. But it mostly seems to be the latter. The obvious rejoinder to which: why should they feel so eager to fork over their money to an institution that did ~nothing to contribute to their success?

> California is expensive because the opportunity to become rich is greater here than elsewhere

Your statement only explains the e.g. high housing costs. The tax question is orthogonal.

Florida and Texas both have comparable numbers of billionaires, and aren't crazy expensive.

Both have a considerably lower number billionaires (2-3x) per capita, and the Florida number should be investigated to see where the money was earned. (What’s the per capita billionaire rate of, say, Monaco or St. Tropez? Is that meaningful?) It’s certainly a nice place to retire to, as evinced by Keith.

... so what you're telling me is, Washington has a very low tax rate and few people who complain about their overall tax burden?

My comment is a reply to this: "To blast the Bay Area and state which made them rich and then flee before they owe a penny is gross."

It's not gross to minimize your obligations towards people who have done nothing for you. Seattle is the relevant counterfactual: flourishing tech scene without the punitive tax burden that we're supposed to believe enabled California's success.

Seattle’s tech scene consists of two giant tech companies that started in the 80s and 90s and the satellite offices of California HQ’d companies.

It’s a lot of cogs. There is no comparison when it comes to startups created in, say, the last 10 years or so.

In the earlier days, Silicon Valley also had had satellite offices from some of major tech companies on Route 128. It was the minicomputer that upset this state of affairs.

Your comment is dripping with opinion and utterly devoid of any attempt at supporting evidence.

I've lived both places. Seattle is not a low-tax paradise, nor are tax dollars completely and utterly squandered in California.

It is gross how, the more money one makes, the more entitled one feels to not have to give a dime back. It's a game to them.

> Seattle is not a low-tax paradise

Excepting special situations for certain PR and USVI residents, Washington state is as close to a tax haven as a US citizen is going to find.

> nor are tax dollars completely and utterly squandered in California

This depends on what you think the dollars should be used for. Most taxpayers would like to see their taxes used for provision of public services, and not in service of a vast public employee enrichment scheme. From this POV, the money is in fact squandered.

> It is gross how, the more money one makes, the more entitled one feels to not have to give a dime back

It's less about greed and more about abuse of generosity. See prior point.

Is that surprising? This is exactly how they treat the rest the world in business (e.g. Apple/Google/Amazon's elaborate international tax evasion schemes see dutch sandwich/double irish style arrangements).

Also see Uber/AirBNB "disruption" of not paying benefits/hotel taxes. I would be more surprised if they didn't "optimize" like that.

It’s not, but this entire thread is focused on quality of life issues, which is exactly what the “tech elite” mentioned in this article want people to focus on, and not the real reason why they’re leaving.

My point is don’t fall for their public relations spin BS.

The longer I love the more I realize that heroes are doing their thing far from positions of prominence in front of the public eye.

I think you’re echoing OP’s point. Some people come to California for opportunity, and when they find enough success, they leave. They’re not CA natives, they’re expats from places with less opportunity and crappier weather. People who want to live in California view the taxes as a cost of enjoying California.

No my main point is that people on here are reading into Rabois’ comments on quality of life issues at face value and not recognizing that his move out of state at this moment in time has to do with avoiding taxes on his IPO gains and not much else.

How do taxes work in the US? I find it so complicated! So California has their own state Capital gains tax? How much is that?

In summary, for normal people, taxes in the US come at federal, state and local levels.

1. Federal:

a) Income tax of 10% on income over around $12k (single) or $24k (married) up to 37% on income over $518k (single) to $622k (married). Capital gains tax is at the same rate for assets held less than a year but up to only 20% for assets held more than one year.

b) FICA, a wage tax. You pay for 7.65% for social security and medicare/medicaid on all wages up to around $133k and 0% above that.

2) State. This varies widely. Some states have no income tax, some states have income tax rates of as high as 13.3% (California). Most are around 5%. Each state has different deductions and rules. Capital gains is usually included in this. Most states (but not all) also levy a sales tax of around 4% to 8% on retail transactions.

3) Local. Most local taxes are in the form of property tax on real estate. The rates vary from around 0.5% to 2% of property value. Some towns levy a separate sales tax on top of a state one (if it exists). The real estate and sales taxes are used to fund schools, police, fire, etc. Many municipalities also levy fees for water, trash, etc. Some cities also have an income tax (for example NYC).

To give you an idea of just how complex it is, the US has approximately 11,000 different sales tax jurisdictions. And it's not just a matter of rates. What is taxed and in what context varies. For example, in NYC, food from groceries is not subject to sales tax. But food from restaurants is. Unless, I think the restaurant has no more than some minimum of seats and you orders your food to go. Some sales taxes can also vary by date (i.e. sales tax during summer, but otherwise none). There are also occasional sales tax "holidays" where no sales tax is charged.

Unsurprisingly, tax lawyers and accountants make good money in the USA :-)

>Some cities also have an income tax (for example NYC).

SF afaik and all of Pennsylvania does the same.

NYC's rate is 3.9% I believe.

San Francisco is not allowed to have a city income tax due to state law. It wouldn’t matter much anyways: it’s a huge commuter town (daytime population is double or more the resident population), so the base to tax is relatively small. The real untapped taxable value in the city is land wealth. Until Prop 13 allows the city to tax land equitably, it will be forced to try harebrained tax schemes on employers or sales.

Good to know!

I think I mixed up discussion of a wealth tax with income tax. Or maybe that was somewhere else.

Thanks for straighting it up for me! :)

Small nitpicks: The Medicare / Medicaid portion of FICA is 1.45% and uncapped, and increases by .9% over $200k.

FICA is also paid equally by the employer (.9% ACA add-on excluded), so it’s only an accounting gimmick that prevents it from being a 15% tax on income.

I moved out of state BEFORE an IPO on options gained while working in CA that I then purchased as a resident outside of CA. This does not work as others are describing it. CA did and will come after anyone who earned options while in the state.

It depends on your situation. A VC does not have options when they invest - they are getting preferred shares.

An employee that forward exercises their options pay taxes on date of hire and vest automatically. Post IPO you’re only taxed when you sell.

You had ISOs or NSOs either granted or vested or both while in CA and those count as income earned in CA. CA will tax that income, even if you don't realize the gains until after you leave the state.

A VC is investing in a company, like any other stock investment. There is no earned income.

If we want to start getting uppity about who is a Californian native, let's first consider the Muewkma Ohlone people who were decimated and whose lands were stolen by European settlers here in the Bay Area.

I think you meant Muwekma Ohlone.

If we are trying to be precise it was the Spanish who stole their land.

Not all Europeans are made equal.

I did, thank you!

This is literally the history of California and why most people immigrated here in the first place.

The state didn't make them rich. You're giving credit where none is due.

Their hard work coupled with many others like them that worked with them made them rich. The same group of people could have been in another state and done just as well.

The people in California that made people successful are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks and Keith Rabois of the area. VC money is the king maker. In the Bay Area it all started with Fairchild. It's the same reason why Seattle is successful. All the Microsoft money seeded the tech scene there.

These kingmakers have had enough of California and are leaving for greener pastures where they can continue to build successful companies without the state leaching off their work.

If they show up in Texas and other states and succeed in replicating their success, it will be clear it was them and not California that was responsible for the success. I'm glad California is rapidly losing its undeserved monopoly on tech.

I’m not sure how to respond but no their success comes from being in Silicon Valley at the right time and developing relationships within this ecosystem. So no I disagree that if Rabois was somehow not in Silicon Valley that he’d be just as successful and wealthy as he is now.

And I’m speaking about his investments. Cutting a check is not “hard work”. You could argue Musk is different because he’s actually the CEO of the his company.

Why is Silicon Valley where it is other than accident of history? The US government could have made military investments elsewhere and Fairchild Semiconductor would have just as easily been in another state.

California and the SF Bay Area doesn't get credit for that. Heck, Silicon Valley was a bunch of fruit orchards for decades. Could have been a different set of fruit orchards in a different state.

Had Fairchild been elsewhere, the Traiterous 8 would have become the kingmakers they became in a different place and Keith Rabois or someone like him would have moved to that ecosystem instead to develop relations at the right time and become rich.

Seattle is the perfect counterfactual to the narrative you're invested in. Microsoft is Seattle's Fairchild.

Saying that all they are doing is "cutting a check" betrays the fact that you've likely never actually worked with a successful VC. The successful ones do so much more than cut a check. For example, the hard work they put in to help you identify and hire talent is indispensable.

I don’t know why this response devolved into defensiveness and personal attacks. I never said I was a founder, though I worked at a startup that Rabois invested in early.

Being an investor is not “hard work” in the same way it is if you’re a founder or employee. Anyone who says it is is lying.

Sorry. Your comments came off as personal attacks on Keith and I mirrored your responses.

I've worked heavily with VCs when I was the first employee at a startup that did well for a few rounds and they worked very hard to help us out. The only difference is that they lived better while helping out because they were already wealthy, but they certainly worked hard for us and for their other investments.

You can be fiscally comfortable and still work hard.

Now I'm not defending how much ownership they take relative to what they put in. Both us and our VCs worked hard. They just took a greater chunk of the equity because of the capital provided.

I think you're severely underestimating the impact of California's investment in education. UC Berkeley and Stanford (private, but accepts state research grants) are top institutions which had for decades attracted some of the brightest minds (professors and students) to the area. These people helped shape the field, from early work on the ARPANET and Operating Systems to the Big Data and AI innovations of today. The expertise is passed on to students which creates not only a highly talented labor pool, but also trains the next generation of innovators.

Considering this concentration of talent, I think it's no surprise that the Bay Area is a hub for innovation, and the impressive list of companies founded by Berkeley [1] and Stanford [2] alumni is a testament to this. The concentration of talent is the environment that attracts funding and VCs, and will ensure that the Bay Area will remain the place to be in tech.

And Seattle, your "perfect counterfactual", has University of Washington, another state-funded top institution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_U... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_S...

The US federal government makes tons of military investments all over the country - I worked for one of them for years and it was not in CA. There was something specific about Silicon Valley. I think Stanford has a lot to do with it personally.

California actually has fairly carefully considered taxation of equity compensation. It might be that the structure Rabois has put together allows him to avoid taxes on equity after he moves; but most people who are leaving will still have to pay those taxes when they finally sell.

Regarding their actions being a symbolic betrayal of the Bay Area, I suspect most of them feel betrayed. High income tax in California doesn't reflect high provision of services. It's due in part to poor cost control and in part to poor property tax policy, such that California's income tax is a de facto transfer of wealth from working people and capital investors to property owners. These investors, companies and workers have paid a tremendous amount in taxes, and have been repaid with ever greater taxation, ever decreasing access to the property they are helping to subsidize, poor services, and even disrespect.

There's no reason to assume that every tax, fee or levy that the government issues is justified. The authors refer to Twitter and other companies as being "...let...off the hook..." for a tax but fail to mention that this was San Francisco's effort to impose its own payroll tax!

Different situations. If you’re a VC you’re simply buying preferred shares. Shouldn’t be owing anything until you sell. And if your residence for that tax year is somewhere else I don’t know of any reason why California could claim capital gains tax simply because you invested in a pre-IPO company and selling post IPO.

The reason some people are surprised by tax bills when they move is because they vested their shares or options while in California as part of their compensation and then later moved. Logically it makes sense in that situation to owe state taxes on income that you earn in the state you earned it.

When you later sell you shouldn’t owe taxes in California if you’re out of state for that tax year.

If you held the preferred shares while you were a resident of California, why shouldn't you be subject to California CGT when you realize the gain in proportion to the length of your residency, just like if it were deferred employment compensation (taxed by CA in proportion to workdays in CA vs workdays elsewhere) or real estate (taxed in full by CA)?

Why should VCs get a tax preference employees don't get?

Yeah, it's weird that in California that if one does an in-kind transaction to obtain options or shares with labor, it's treated unfavorably relative to a cash transaction for the same things. It's a regressive tax: a special case to tax working people more for gains on equity. The normal way to recognize income on equities is at the time of sale.

This is one of a few examples where California's progressive politics haven't lead to progressive policies, whereas states that are much more non-progressive in their politics -- states like Texas -- have, as a practical matter, policies that are much better for working people.

I suppose that, hypothetically, when you purchase shares with cash it's "post-tax" cash; whereas when you purchase shares with labor it's "pre-tax" labor.

when you own shares as a VC it’s because you’re an investor. when you receive equity as an employee it is because it’s compensation.

when you get equity as an employee you’re taxed when you vest and when you sell. you shouldn’t be taxed when you sell by California if you’re out of state.

Well, this point specifically applies to options. Per FTB-1004 (https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1004.html) you will be taxed whenever you exercise, whether you're a resident or a non-resident. Doesn't matter if you're out-of-state for a particular tax year.

It is not really correct to cast this in terms of owing taxes on income in the state that you earned it because options are not income. There is a non-symmetry here with financial options generally: if you lived in California and bought some options, then left the state, and then, as a non-resident, exercised the options and sold shares, you would not be taxed in California because there was no income in California. Income on a stock transaction is generally recognized at the time a security is sold. Obtaining options and stocks both represent an outflow of money, not an inflow. It's a regressive policy to treat options purchased in-kind with labor in an unfavorable way, with regards to taxation, relative to those purchased with cash.

Ok but tech elite here aka VC investors aren’t getting options when they invest.

So this tax question doesn’t apply to them. Rabois can move to Miami now and if he sells his IPO shares next year he owes California nothing.

Well, VCs do sometimes get options -- that's what convertible debt is. Usually options are not treated as compensation, though.

It is likely that Rabois has a mix of compensation from his firm, as a practical matter, and some of it is likely to be options -- but even if not, Rabois and people like him have paid a lot of taxes in California. A lot more than they would have paid in most states. When you consider how much they paid relative to how well the state government has provided services -- taking other states into consideration -- it's hard to see how the people moving are betraying anyone. They paid and paid and paid.

This is a pretty wild spin to me, if those taxes came with clean streets and blowjobs the well paid non-bazzilionaires wouldn't be leaving for QoL reasons. Why should people feel loyalty to a city that has tons of money to go around for bottomless budget traps like junkies and dregs from out of state but nothing of significance for the people who actually make those support programs possible in the first place? The only reason before was the money and now those earners can get that money while living in a less exploitive environment.

I moved out to Silicon Valley in 2009. Downturns are the best years. They flush out all the folks who are hoping to get rich fast by peddling snake oil, and leave behind the folks who are building, who are inventing, who are a little bit weird, or who just love the beautiful weather. The next tech boom starts when somebody finds a crazy invention useful; that's a lot easier when people are living ordinary lives than when everybody's chasing a hot fad.

I'm sorry but I find this to be a slightly myopic narrative, and a little naive.

Con artists can have a long view of things.

And most people who move are just regular people who lost their jobs.

Frankly, I don't think there's too much space between 'get rich quick' and 'get really rich over a longer period' people.

I’ve lived in SF for 11 years now and it feels like city is mostly full of people who actually want to be here now. Even in covid times, I feel like there’s a better sense of community and civic engagement with neighbors. I also was super annoyed by people who came to SF that said it’s not diverse, when it was them not exploring outside of the tech world. All anecdotal, but life in the city is actually kinda awesome despite covid, but I do miss bigger hangouts than just a small social circle, which isn’t allowed anymore even.

I've lived in SF for two years now. I _choose_ to live in SF, at 34, and I commute to south bay for my job, with a bit more WFH now than before COVID but I sometimes still commute.

I don't want to get into details but the other thing I like about the people staying in SF because they chose to is a healthy disregard for authority together with a very smart sense about how to take care of themselves and others. It's saving me from terrible depression or going into complete isolation in COVID times.

The thing is, the SFBA while everything is closed down/restricted is not the same as during a regular economic downturn when you can still go out to eat and socialize.

For all the faults I take issue with, the SFBA is probably the single place I most fit in culturally in the world. It’s where I want to be. But I can’t justify paying the absurd rents to live there when my job doesn’t require me to be there AND socialization/networking/most leisure activities are on pause. After March there was nothing for me to do except enjoy nature activities/exercise outside, and my social life was in shambles.

I can’t wait for everything to go back to normal and move back to the Bay Area, but for now I am very happy I moved back in with my parents.

I grew up in the SFBA and the absurd housing prices make me sad. I would have loved to stay but it just made no sense. I left about 5 years ago to move to SoCal where I can actually afford a house in a school district that doesn't completely suck. I paid 600k which is still a lot - but if I wanted an equivalent up north it would have been over 1 mil.

> they just never really liked the city.

Pretty hard to like a city where a non-trivial portion of the residents are hating on you and blaming you and others like you for many problems of their own doing.

I left a year ago and I personally hope both San Francisco and all of California suffers fiscal collapse. The state grossly mistreats it's most productive citizens, when its those very citizens that fund the greatest chunk of the state's largesse. Hopefully enough major taxpayers will leave that it creates a fiscal crisis that can only be solved by increasing taxes further, driving more productive citizens out and sending the state government in a death spiral.

You'd be bitter too if you paid several hundred thousand in state taxes in 2019 to a state whose politicians probably at least halved your net worth by using your company as their whipping boy for years just to make themselves look good.

I can echo this. I loved the bay when I first moved here 8 years ago, but the political dynamic of the area, and the ever growing drug/homelessness crisis said dynamic is completely unable to deal with, both have just worn my enthusiasm away.

Not all tech employees wanted to live in SF and commute for 4 hours a day. Cities like Palo Alto and Mountain View had severe restrictions on building housing. So SF, Oakland and San Jose took the burden of housing the techies. Naturally people here got angry. But instead of focusing the anger in solving problems it was extremely common for people I meet to loudly complain about tech workers - bars, parties, nextdoor and side walks were full of hate messages. I left the city 3 years ago and I completely understand how frustrating it is.

It is unbecoming to point at the homeless and blame them for making our cities unattractive. These are human beings with souls and emotions. When they make us feel uncomfortable with their appearance or behavior we should remember they lead lives where they are likely suffering most of every day.

We as a people have failed to create a society with space for these people to exist in peace, happiness, and good health. Now we can’t let ourselves conveniently overlook their humanity due to the inconvenience their state creates for us as a whole.

>It is unbecoming to point at the homeless and blame them for making our cities unattractive.

I had a coworker who visited sf. A homeless person threw a bottle of urine all over him.

Do you think that made it more or less attractive? Seriously we all suffer, but most of us suffer in such a way that we don't make the world too much worse for others.

They are people, and I feel for the trouble they are in, but no amount of compassion or empathy could convince me to take a stroll through a majority of SF downtown after dark. Likewise with many of the South Bay trails and parks. I don't even go to SF downtown during the day anymore because of the number of times I've almost stepped in human feces, and the needles strewn about.

8 years of liberal politicians claiming to care, and 8 years later it is significantly worse. I could excuse the lack of progress if the city government wasn't rolling in money the entire time. If they can't solve the problem with the way things were, they are going to have a hell of time doing it with the way they are headed.

Edit: I'd also like to point out society does not exist to gift every person peace, safety, and health. A just society offers opportunities, not guarantees.

> A just society offers opportunities, not guarantees.

Tell that to the people who made a mistake when they were younger, got a criminal record, and are now vilified for the rest of their lives and are turned down from the vast majority of jobs. Is it any wonder you see those people turn to crime to make a living?

Sounds like those people need more opportunities to me.

> I'd also like to point out society does not exist to gift every person peace, safety, and health. A just society offers opportunities, not guarantees.

In that case I won't guarantee not to nick your stuff, just give you the opportunity to not have it nicked.

An opportunity is enough, I'd politely decline :)

An opportunity isn’t a choice. It’s more of a dice roll, and you don’t get to see the number.

It is by definition a chance to do something. If you don't get a choice, then you never had an opportunity.

If you think modern society provides equality of opportunity than you are delusional! There are those whom are born into wealth and those that are born into poverty. There are those who are born into college educated households and there are those who are born into high-school educated households. Some personalities are resilient enough to cope with the short end of the stick and others don’t know what hit them until they are 4 years behind — in math and science — those whom were born into better conditions.

Go volunteer to tutor at-risk middle school students if you don’t believe me. Many of them can barely read. Do you think they have an equal opportunity to successful higher education in fields that are worth getting degrees in?

I come from poverty myself, and I couldn't agree more. I never said we are where we need to be. I was simply pointing out a difference in goals.

>society does not exist to gift every person peace, safety, and health.

Helping to guarantee things like physical safety is one of the fundamental parts of the social contract. Laws governing those areas are covered by the Constitution (depending on how you interpret “peace”)

It should be a federal crime for the police to send their homeless to other cities.

>You'd be bitter too if you paid several hundred thousand in state taxes in 2019

If I ever pay several hundred thousand dollars in state tax in a single year I will be a millionaire many times over, with far more money than I will ever need, and will be grateful for my remarkably good fortune.

You’ll be simultaneously grateful and also resentful towards the squandering of resources that you could direct towards better ends.

If you want to put them towards better ends, donations are tax free.

Voluntary bloodletting is not a treatment for parasite infestation.

Several hundred thousand state taxes in one year? That means you made at least 2.5m. What exactly are you complaining about?

>What exactly are you complaining about?

I don't have an English degree or anything, but I'm pretty sure he's complaining about the several hundred thousands in state taxes.

I think the point is: We would all likely gladly trade our current salaries for a salary that incurred "several hundred thousands" in state taxes. If I was paying that much in taxes, that would mean I was a multi-millionaire, and I would pay those taxes with a huge smile on my face and then enjoy my vacation in Fiji, without any resentment whatsoever.

> If I was paying that much in taxes, that would mean I was a multi-millionaire, and I would pay those taxes with a huge smile on my face and then enjoy my vacation in Fiji, without any resentment whatsoever.

Easy come, easy go. When you are productive enough to earn a salary of several millions of dollars, your tolerance for being extorted disproportionately because of your productivity might be different. You might also be upset at the wastefulness of those institutions and individuals who performed the extortion and spent your money unwisely.

I'm not sure. Most of us voted the same group of politicians year in and year out, right? It looks we lost check and balance years ago, but that's voters' choice, no?

> I personally hope both San Francisco and all of California suffers fiscal collapse.

And you are surprised that the residents hate you? I dislike plenty of cities but ideating about their absolute collapse speaks a lot.

"Pretty hard to like a city where a non-trivial portion of the residents are hating on you and blaming you and others like you for many problems of their own doing."

Fair enough!

Though, ahem, that might describe the feeling of Californians who have moved anywhere else lately.

You literally described my life perfectly, I was one of those people. I hated living there and was so glad to leave as soon as my job allowed it. I just really hope they don't make me go back after all this is over, though I have a feeling they will :/

The Bay Area is beautiful and the people are wonderful, but its just not where I want to be living my life.

I haven't live in SF since the mid-90s but what are the complaints? From my viewpoint it's easily in the top 10 places to live in the U.S, so unless people are coming from one of the other places or have a particular overwhelming interest like 'sunny weather all the time' I don't know what the complaints would actually be.

As it happens, tomorrow I’m putting in my 30-day notice to terminate my lease and leave the Bay. (And I’m paying 2 additional months rent in fees to do so)

Not being tied to the office fundamentally changes the calculus of choosing where to live. There just aren’t good reasons to live here anymore for so many of us.

Even if you enjoy the area, chances are you can get a better deal by moving just a bit further away. Actually, I can pay the 2 months rent in termination fees and move almost literally anywhere else in the state and still come out ahead financially. Since commute time is not a factor, many options have become viable.

There's a lot to like about many areas of California. Which ones may depend on your weather, cultural, etc. preferences. But Silicon Valley proper I find not particularly appealing; housing costs are only part of the reason. (SF itself has well-documented pluses and minuses.) I don't live or work in CA/SV. But if I were in SV but no longer needed to commute, I might well stay in CA but I'd probably move somewhere outside of SV commuting distance.

I did this and completely agree. I lived in the bay area since high school, more than two decades ago. Last year I finally moved away from it for good. Not far, just to the Greater Sacramento area. (I've been working remotely for a couple years, well before COVID) Qualify of life improvement is huge. Weather and cultural are important reasons for me to stay in California (plus family and friends), and I still get that here. (in fact, I prefer weather in Sac -- real summers/not chilly, and winters are similar to the bay area). My house now is easily 1/3 the cost of a similar one in the peninsula or 1/2 the cost of a similar one in east bay.

> real summers/not chilly

I mean, it's not cold once you get outside of SF/San Bruno. If you're in the peninsula or south bay, it's really fucking hot during the summer. Uncomfortably hot because no one has AC and many of the homes don't have insulation still.

I think you built my case for me. Sac is consistently hot (90s every day for at least 4 months in the summer) and so, basically every house has AC. Many have solar panels (mine does) because of the available sunny days, for sustainability. It makes for a way easier summer than in bay where you get 2 weeks of dreadful summer (because no AC) and then the week after that is in the 60s-70s and you bring out the jackets again.

I wouldn't say the inconsistency in weather is the issue... It's that the homes are ancient and landlords don't want to update them. Why update when you'll not get significantly more money for it (and then have to pay lots of property taxes)? It's why many of the homes that are bought in my neighborhood are completely torn down by new owners and rebuilt. Every single street in my neighborhood with a recent sale has a tear down + rebuild happening.

I'm sure the renter to owner market in Sacramento is different than the bay area...

If this year's summer becomes the norm I think it may be a bit too hot for places like Sacramento. And all the places I lived in SV so far have had A/C so that hasn't been an issue. But what's great about being near the bay is that at night, most summer nights, it still cools down way below 20C so it's easy to simply keep doors/windows open after sunset and close them in the morning to have cool air inside the house, without an A/C, almost every day. There are exceptions of course like we had this summer where there were 2-3 days long heatwaves with no drop below 25C at night, A/C helped with that.

It can hit 100 these days in San Francisco itself in summer, but there is still this weird sanctimonious attitude about air conditioning. We asked some landscape designers about leaving room for a unit in the yard and more than once got a huffy "People don't use A/C in San Francisco" sort of answer. It's extra miserable if the windows have to stay shut due to wildfire smoke.

Don't know about peninsula but in south bay tons of old homes have AC. And more importantly, dry hot feels very comfortable to me personally.

If by real summers you mean multiple days over 100F then count me out. Enjoy your heat stroke. It gets hot enough in South Bay even near the water.

I moved to Sacramento for all the same reasons, and I also love it here. I remember a lot of people talked down on Sac when I lived in the Bay. It feels like I’ve discovered a secret by moving here.

EDIT: Here are a few more things to like about Sacramento.

There seems to be a large population of highly educated ex-military types concentrated here. It’s been an unexpected source of high quality hires. I never saw these people in the Bay.

I’m in an international marriage. We were worried we wouldn’t be able to find our people upon moving here. That hasn’t been a problem at all. Fellow expats are everywhere. It’s a fairly diverse area.

My problem with Sacramento is 1) crime in Sacramento proper (I have friends in the Sac DA's office, so maybe I am biased by hearing the worst of the worst), and 2) the summer weather. The suburbs of Sacramento, especially to the north, are very attractive to my wife and I and I think that if we do stay in California long-term we will be heading to Sacramento to make it happen.

I ended up leaving SF and moving to Austin, but Sacramento was really high on my list as well. It's a very nice town, and being half-way between SF and Lake Tahoe is pretty hard to beat :)

I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail. There's not many places in the US like this. Europe has a lot but there's not much tech jobs in them.

You are also close to SF if you like the madness of the city every once in a while.

Other suburby places with nature easily accessible usually have a more spartan retail experience and sometimes the mail/Amazon doesn't work so well.

A lot depends on what the nature you're looking to be accessible to looks like of course. (And I'll be the first to agree that the Bay Area is probably especially nice in this regard.) But I'd say you were describing any significant coastal city, areas of Colorado (can't speak to other mountain states although places like Boise I would think...), etc. If you're looking for a reasonably affluent suburb there really isn't a particular shortage of them around the country--and many have good outdoor recreation options.

> a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail.

Maybe I'm missing, but I don't see anything in that list that isn't true of almost every metro area in the US. I think people living in SF notice when new services come out that are only available there, like Uber was at first. But they don't notice when those services later spread to the rest of the country. You can get Amazon Prime shipping and rideshares everywhere now. Other cities may have somewhat less luxury retail, but likely have shorter drives with less traffic to get to nature.

The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area.

Other than easy access to nature, all of those points are true for major metro areas. But other than say, Salt Lake City, does any other metro area offer such close access to nature? Boston and Seattle are even much farther away...

> The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area.

Define "easy access to nature." Where I live, there's a major state park within the city limits and a very large lake within ~20 minutes drive. In ~2 hours I can be at the beach. In ~3-4 hours I can be in the mountains. And untold amounts of basically empty land just outside the city. If you're going to arbitrarily define "easy access to nature" as "mountains next to ocean right next to me", well OK, not a lot of places fit that bill. But that's a very narrow definition designed to fit basically SV.

Easy access to nature means I can go on a scenic five-mile hike between lunch and dinner. It means I can see a beautiful view without planning a day trip. I can meet with groups of friends of all fitness levels and enjoy a pleasant afternoon outdoors where we all have fun.

I can go see thousands of migratory birds a few miles from my apartment. Half Moon Bay is 30-45 minutes away, depending on road conditions. Fairly strenuous hiking and rock-climbing in the Santa Cruz Mountains is also 30-60 minutes away. Santa Cruz itself is not much farther.

I have lived all over the east coast for most of my life, and this degree of access has made an outdoors person of my notoriously sedentary self.

> Easy access to nature means I can go on a scenic five-mile hike between lunch and dinner.

So can I, as I mentioned there's a major state park within the city limits where I live...

> It means I can see a beautiful view without planning a day trip.

Incredibly vague and subjective. What constitutes a "beautiful view"?

> I can meet with groups of friends of all fitness levels and enjoy a pleasant afternoon outdoors where we all have fun.

Not unique to the SF Bay Area at all.

Again I think this is very much a cherry-picked definition of "easy access to nature" that is designed to preclude any place not named "SF Bay Area." Still, the kinds of things you were describing can be found in metro areas all over the country.

I'm not sure why you feel this need to argue that other regions are just as good as the Bay Area. Are you a tourism promoter? Whether you're right in absolute terms is insubstantial. What matters is that hundreds of thousands of people feel the way I do, and that's why we moved here or stayed here.

>Boston and Seattle are even much farther away...

I'll grant you the Santa Cruz Mountains if you're on the southern end of the Bay. You've also got the hills in the East Bay and various options in Marin and points north if you're in Marin.

But Boston, in addition to various coastal walks has a bunch of nearby parks and small mountains/hills to the west and in southern NH. Also tons of sea kayaking/canoeing. Depending upon where you live, bigger peaks in NH are maybe 2-3 hours.The Sierras are further than that from the SFBA.

Don't get me wrong. The Bay Area has great recreational options but so do a lot of other cities depending upon what you're looking for.

The variety of landscapes within a 30 minute drive is unparalleled in the Bay Area, though.

I grew up in suburban Boston. It was a very nice town - we lived on an acre of land, with woods behind the house. Drive 30 minutes in any direction, and you got basically - woods. Maybe some ponds and fields, with scattered houses and suburban town centers between. The city (a pretty nice one) was 30 minutes away. You could get to waterfront, in Boston or Salem or Nahant, but there aren't really beaches in most of Massachusetts (outside of Cape Cod). It did have a massive amount of history, though - in that 30 minute drive was basically everywhere significant to the birth of the USA.

I'm on the peninsula now, in the hills. 10 minute walk to a suburban downtown. 3 minute drive (or ~20 minute walk) and we're on some Bay trails. 5 minute drive and we're in the mountains. 5 minute drive to a massive lake over the San Andreas. 20 minute drive and we're on the beach at the Pacific Ocean. 30 minute drive (or 40 minute Caltrain) and we're up in SF. 30 minute drive and we're in downtown San Jose.

Denver, Las Vegas, Reno, Boulder, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, Santa Fe...

I live in Seattle (south end of Ballard). I can jog to Discovery Park and be in forest surrounded by beach, or up to Carkeek and see tide pools and wetlands. I can be on a real hiking trailhead in less than an hour.

Camelback Mountain is half an hour from the center of Phoenix. Virginia Key Beach Park's walking trails are 20 minutes from downtown Miami. Lionel Hampton-Beecher Hills Park is about the same distance from Atlanta. You get the idea.

SF certainly has really nice nature close by, but it's not like other US cities are industrial wastelands.

Seriously. The idea that Seattle is somehow _far_ from nature can only be held by someone who never visited here. Or looked at a map.

Having lived in both for many years, I'm not sure how anyone could come to the conclusion that nature is more difficult to access in Seattle than the Bay Area. It is a 45 minute drive from the skyscrapers to the Cascade mountains proper; in the Bay Area, it is a 3-hour drive to reach anything comparable. Seattle is bounded on three sides by fresh and salt water in equal measure, similar to San Francisco, with a large boating culture. The city is even nicknamed ("The Emerald City") by virtue of its many expansive and semi-wild parks in the city, plus the general greenery of the surrounding region.

I am a pretty avid nature enthusiast that spends a lot of time in the outdoors. It isn't even close, whether you are looking for mountains, water, or parks. Seattle's reputation in this regard is well-deserved; I'm not sure if there is another metro of its size that is so embedded in and connected to nature. And if you look at map, it is easy to see why -- the city is essentially surrounded by water that is surrounded by very rugged mountains (which has provided challenges for growth).

FWIW, the other large metros in the Pacific Northwest (definitely Vancouver and to a lesser extent Portland) have similarly exceptional access to nature. Some of the Mountain West cities also have great access to nature, though not as diverse as Seattle.

"nature": beaches, mountains, ski resorts, redwood forests... Seattle is like that or even better but 9 months out of a year the weather is just a big no no.

Los Angeles has great access too. I can walk to it.

I agree, this describes most metro areas over 100k people in the US I feel.

Except the access to nature aspect. I mean, that is a broad and ambiguous statement, but not too many places are as beautiful as California.

If you were to take access to nature to mean, being within driving distance of nature sites that people travel across the country to experience, then the number of metro areas drops significantly.

Look at a map of national parks. Most of the population of the US is within driving distance of a national park.

The Appalachian mountain range stretches from GA to Maine, and contains dozens of state and national parks that people travel across the country to see. Nearly the entire eastern seaboard is within range of one of them.

The only part that isn’t is Florida, and they have better beaches than California, swamps, lakes, and massive crystal clear springs.

I have family in Wisconsin, and I enjoy visiting. I like parts of Milwaukee, and I've gotten out into the countryside. It's really nice.

This is all subjective, of course, but what can I say? I've been in restaurant and bars at the top of tall hotels in Milwaukee, I enjoyed it and the view of the lake and city... and no, I don't think it even remotely measures up to views of the bay from Pacific Heights or another dozen views in San Francisco. Nor does the surrounding countryside in Milwaukee - which I sincerely do like quite a bit - measure up to redwood forests, Pt. Reyes, the headlands, the coastline from SF to Santa Cruz. A little farther afield, Big Sur and the high Sierras, Sonoma and Napa valleys. I'm not really even sure how to debate it with people, it seems so self-evident to me. California and SF have some really bad qualities, but no, it's not all six of one and a half dozen of the other around any randomly selected US city of 100K in the US. The nature around San Francisco is a differentiator and a selling point (though I would tend to agree that it is now officially overpriced).

Puget Sound is remarkable, though, and the forest around Portland is beautiful. As I've mentioned in another thread, though, the coast is far more accessible in San Francisco.

> I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail.

Maybe there’s something you’re not explaining here but there’s plenty of places all over the country that fit this bill. Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Denver, etc.

And Amazon 2 day delivery is available all over the place...

right? this person is stuck in like 2015

In some places “easily accessible nature” means you can drive just a few hours. But pull up a map of Cupertino or Mountain View and zoom out just a little. There are dozens and dozens of parks in biking distance. Austin and Atlanta are not like this. Haven’t been to Charlotte or Raleigh in ages but, maybe. It’s a nice climate for sure. Denver is really pretty but it depends how you feel about real winter.

> Austin and Atlanta are not like this.

Have you been to Atlanta? It doesn't seem like you're familiar.

The Beltline [0,1], a paved multi-use trail converted from old railway, encircles the city's major neighborhoods and connects everything. It's one of the city's major features. Dozens of parks, including some of the largest -- Piedmont [2], Old Forth Ward, Grant Park, and the old Bellwood Quarry [3] where they filmed Walking Dead, It, etc. -- are all immediately accessible.

The Beltine is being connected to the Silver Comet Trail [4,5], which is a paved bike trail stretching all the way to Alabama (the nation's second longest). Light rail is also being added to the Beltline.

Outside the city you've got access to the Chattahoochee River for rafting. The Palisades [6] provide excellent river-adjacent hiking.

Stone Mountain [7], a giant granite mountain, is 30 minutes east of the city and provides excellent hiking and running.

Kennesaw Mountain [8] is 30 minutes northwest of the city and is great for hiking and dog walking.

Red Top Mountain is 40 minutes northwest, and you have a host of lower Appalachian mountains to the north.

Allatoona Lake [9] is 40 minutes northwest, where they filmed Ozark, and provides excellent boating. Lake Lanier is an hour away and is even bigger.

Atlanta isn't called "city in the forest" for nothing. We have so many trees, parks, and outdoor activities.

[0] https://beltline.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeltLine

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_Park

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westside_Reservoir_Park

[4] https://www.silvercometga.com/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Comet_Trail

[6] https://www.atlantatrails.com/hiking-trails/hiking-east-pali...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Mountain

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_Mountain

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Allatoona

I lived in Atlanta (starting from my GA Tech days) for over a decade and I've been in the South Bay for a few years. As much as I love Atlanta and the gigantic house I was able to afford, landscape-wise it doesn't even come close to what the bay area has to offer. Beltline is pretty neat but you will find it rather disappointing if you have ever been to one of the coastal trails in the bay. Not to mention the lack of skiing options (sorry but Gatlinburg ain't Lake Tahoe).

This is pre-Covid:

> easily accessible nature

From my office in Palo Alto, I can ride my bicycle up Sand Hill Road, past horse farms, and then up a secluded 2000 ft (~600 meters) mountain with virtually no traffic and return during my lunch break. Or I can take a long lunch and ride out to the coast, through rolling farmlands. And I can do that virtually any day of the year, thanks to the local climate.

Most of the peninsula (which is, arguably, not SV proper) is like this, with tons of hiking within walking distance of where you live or work. The reason is that almost everything west of I-280 is undeveloped. As you ride or drive around that area, it's very easy to find a view where the only sign of humans is the road you're traveling on.

If I want to go skiing, I can leave work an hour early and drive up to Tahoe for the weekend. Or I could drive down to Santa Cruz for the day and go surfing.

Not quite "nature", but many people like to drive up to Napa for a day-trip to visit world-class wineries.

> luxury retail

Then, after work, I can walk over to my choice of Michelin starred restaurants (and I will pass multiple art galleries and branches of private banks). Granted, none of the restaurants in Palo Alto have more than one Michelin star (how gauche!).

If conspicuous consumption is your thing, San Mateo, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara each have high-end malls with practically every luxury brand you can imagine. Want to buy Ferrari or a McLaren? There's a dealer for each one within 10 miles of Mountain View.

> plenty of places all over the country that fit this bill

Many places have some of what SV offers. Very very few have everything, and I would argue that none of the cities you listed fit the bill.

> Many places have some of what SV offers. Very very few have everything, and I would argue that none of the cities you listed fit the bill.

Ah, but all of them have more affordable housing.

I think the point here is that there's things that justify that price and the other downcomings of living in the area.

I'm the one that started this discussion and it proved controversial. I tried to just talk about like, the amenities of living in the area and tech jobs, but most people replied saying "wait there's two or three of your list of five or six in...".

I may be biased because I'm not a "generalist web developer", I work in either crazy startups or kinda niche embedded/low level roles. I still get two or three really good job offers from big companies per month even when I'm not looking and they are in SV. I was getting one or more per week pre-COVID. Even when actively looking for that type jobs in Colorado and Austin I can't find them.

Colorado would be more interesting for me if I was a citizen and could work the government aerospace and defense jobs but unfortunately I can't.

Ok, so what?

The premise was that there are lots of other places that have what SV has. And, by implication, that SV's high prices are unjustified.

I was merely pointing out that SV has an array of amenities that are found together in very few other places. And if you want what SV has, there are very few other places you can get it. Supply and demand. It's that simple.

Maybe you don't care about fancy restaurants or art galleries or spending time outdoors. That's totally cool. Maybe all you care about is finding the absolute cheapest apartment on planet earth. Again, knock your socks off.

SV doesn't have cheap housing. If that's all you care about, look someplace else.

As an SV local, I am overly jaded about the place. South Bay is wonderfully boring suburbia to grow up to- and would be to raise a family, if not for the housing prices- and S.F. seems pitifully small, and everything closes so early for a supposed world-class city. Not to mention, BART ends before last call, which is just crazy. The outdoors here are great, but how many times can one climb Castle Rock, Mission Peak, or visit Angel Island, Rancho San Antonio, or Point Reyes? And Muir Woods is always full of tourists, it's like Disneyland in a forest.

Of course, the grass is always greener. But I think natives are entitled to grouse a little bit, given the circumstances. It's just a little scary if this is the best the U.S. has to offer.

"Despising, For you, the city, thus I turn my back: There is a world elsewhere."

>Other suburby places with nature easily accessible usually have a more spartan retail experience and sometimes the mail/Amazon doesn't work so well.

Most suburbs of decent sized cities on the east coast have 2 day Amazon shipping, even the ones close to national parks. And the mail works fine in basically any suburban area.

The Bay Area isn't especially nice in this regard, for one reason:it is crowded. you won't ever get a moment of peace in all of that nature unless you get lucky.

For variety, I actually think the LA area as a whole is better. But it has the same problem.

There’s plenty of quiet, uncrowded nature in the Bay Area if you spend some time exploring off the beaten path. I live in SF and don’t have a car and have still spent hours at a stretch in parks totally alone, not to mention when I do get out of the city.

I think the last unspoken one and perhaps most important one in this list is access to family in the APAC region. The other proposals (i.e. Colorado, Arizona, etc.) have all the other stuff but not the access to Asia.

Looking at air travel - Denver to India or Austin to China - everything is a 1 day+ and over $2000+. SF/LA to these places is about 15 hours and about $1500.

If the business (i.e. Apple/Google making phones) needs to fly execs, production folks as well as if the tech engineers need in person meetings or have family, that's going to be a made much more challenging.

I'm seeing economy flights round trip from Colorado to Delhi at 1300, rounding up, for Christmas week. Don't really know how much this is due to Covid-related drop in demand, but it seems like a useful data point to put out there, since I've definitely seen similarly priced flights during non-pandemic years.

I fly to China quite often from Austin, it's not that bad, you do AUS-DFW-PVR,PEK... you only lose an hour or so for the short hop, the DFW-China leg is basically the same from SFO

Also from AUS, you have Houston and Dallas as two big airport options to get to China.

The most important thing is not the airports. All metros have them. The differentiator is the vast number of asian grocery stores, restaurants and other stores/businesses. In America the Bay Area is only behind Los Angeles in that regard.

Every major metro in the US has these things. There's nothing unique about SF/SV in that regard.

Lots of replies are saying this exists in "every major metro" in the US.

But if you start narrowing it to places with pleasant weather, suddenly it starts looking like a smaller picture. The west coast, west of the cascades or central valley in CA. Probably places like the Carolinas, Tennessee. And maybe we'll be nice to Colorado and give them a trophy for at least having sunshine in the winter :)

You don't have to pay SF rents, of course, but you're not buying a $100k mansion and getting all of these things either.

> appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb

People I know dislike the fact that most of SV is a typical suburb indistinguishable from what you see in any random Florida city. And consider how many busses bring workers from their apartments in SF down to the office in the burbs.

Where are you going?

ATX, baby!

Congratulations!

Always have to ask, where are you moving and why did you pick it?

Austin. Back to where I came from.

In my estimation, it has the most coolness-per-dollar. What I actually want is to buy a house, and I just can’t do that around here. Austin is comparatively cheaper and has a culture that appeals to me. It feels a lot like California, but without much of the baggage.

Parts of Colorado, Oregon, and Washington are also strong contenders, but I am predisposed to like Texas.

>> and still come out ahead financially.

Ya. Earning a SF wage but living elsewhere is great. But there is a flip side to this coin. As employees realize they can work from home, employers also realize they can have employees work from home. They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages. Those who convert their in-office jobs into work-from-home are a covid oddity. Those who will be hired in the future on the assumption that they will always work remotely will likely face much lower wages. I predict a race for the bottom.

We’ve been trying to hire these people for ages locally and remotely and we still couldn’t find them so I have no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19.

A lot of people, myself included, have been quite hesitant to work remotely until now. I've been pleasantly surprised how well it's gone and would consider a remote position in the future but I think it'd have to be a fully remote team. When offices do return, being one of a few remote workers means you will likely be left out of a lot of teambuilding, conversations, etc.

Every team I've been on since 2015 has been distributed, even when my job is "onsite". Sometimes we're in multiple offices, or we have people in the office & people working from home, but the net effect is almost no one can count on going to an office and only working w/ people in the same physical office. We're all largely working remotely anyway, but we're just not being honest about it.

This may be the biggest societal contribution from the pandemic, if and when we survive it

I agree with this. I cannot find talented and senior folks who fill the niche of my team (deep understanding of Linux systems, containers, and operating distributed systems). There seem to be a lot of SWEs in the world and very few SREs, let alone vanilla systems administrators for hire who are really good.

I think as an industry everyone is pushed towards software engineering and the large clouds have vacuumed up everyone worth their weight for operations. We make it happen but it’s so stressful because our team and workload balance is so far out of whack.

SREs get treated like a cost center and no career progression. The majority by volume of sysadmins were automated out by the wave of cloud vendors, leaving over a decade now of undertraining. Those who are left are mostly mission critical unfireable greybeards.

SWE get to work on new products and get career growth towards bigger and more interesting projects as reward for delivery

Of course people focus on where the opportunities are. It's not the fault of an individual company but an overall industry mindset. "Reward it or lose it" should be a mantra of availability in technical industry expertise.

It's really unfortunate. Cloud allows rapid iteration, but doing a bit of self-hosting/colocation is such an insane cost savings that I think a lot of folks are really missing out on. I know at least 1 startup I worked at that would've had a more comfortable runway had they not went wholesale into AWS instead of playing it smart with hybrid. Paying a small team of folks even an astronomical salary to keep a small number of servers up 24/7 and use cloud where it makes sense (S3, elastic CI/CD with EC2) should still be saving some companies 6+ figures a month.

You train them, remember that? :D

This is legitimately what we're doing. We're bringing in really junior folks and spending years training/improving them. Unfortunately that doesn't help now. I thought it would be easier this year to hire due to COVID and layoffs, but it just hasn't been.

Did you post in Who’s Hiring? :)

The company I work for did. I asked to edit the post to add my specific posting and they said it couldn't be done. It'll be there next month though!

It helps now if you started a year or two ago. ((sad trombone))

> no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19

The talent isn't being converted from potential - as was recently said, "You can't be what you can't see".

I was in Kansas City meeting people in Jan and it's pretty clear that there's a lot of talent hiding out there in downtown Missouri.

The talent there tops out at SSE because there's no vertical space without jumping to management & two years down the folks know are "mid-west-nice" managers with an iron fist behind it.

Several people who should've chased down the principal engineer roles have become these sorts of managers who never made it to directors because they're always been better devs than they were managers. And this seemed twice as bad for the young uns to have a dev-heavy manager squash a few of their attempts to actually own decisions, instead of just proposing them & see that role as a way to get that ability.

Most folks though things would be different if they had moved to SFBA, but all of them hit this point when they already had kids in school with stable single-income households (house all paid for).

In fact, I'd be one of those people in Bangalore if I had a bit more skills as a manager (completely sucking at management is a good way to be forced to chase the dev side).

If they could hired as a principal dev via remote out of being promising senior se, then this process would actually convert a lot of the talent into actual productivity in the industry.

To clarify, you're saying that limited career growth opportunity at satellite sites is stunting the talent development at that locale?

Not satellite offices, I was specifically talking about employers who are entirely local.

Yes, the strong incentive is to stay put, stick to the local employer as long as you can and still get a role that pays more money. The skills you get from sticking around just make it harder to shift as well sometimes. The output gets equated to talent - "built my sixteenth monolith .NET CRUD web app" is not as well respected as it should be.

For example, there's folks in Portland who are looking at the Nike CEO situation with great trepidation - talented people who would do very well in a new job, assuming they don't need to move.

> The talent there tops out at SSE

That was my experience at an F500 in the midwest. I wasn't a senior engineer but I was doing the same type of work as the seniors on my team. And I felt like my role could have more ownership. They did have team leads, a few architects, and agile related roles. But there wasn't much else for devs who didn't want to be managers.

My current company in the bay area is a lot better. I feel like I have more ownership, and the IC roles are more granular. I think technically senior can be terminal, and staff/principal roles here require influencing other teams. But my company has thought about promoting ICs, and I clearly see how staff/principals have a more challenging job.

From my own experience, it's just not a good time to change a job no matter how enticing it sounds.

I started a new job in April. Between when I interviewed and when I was started, offices shut down. It's been great.

The fact that everyone is remote is actually a great 'leveler', since the company has a 'main office' and a few satellite offices in other cities. I'm not affiliated with the 'main office', but I actually am concerned that I'll suffer career-wise once the company goes back to in-office, since I'll be in a satellite office missing out on casual-but-important lunch/coffee/hallway conversations.

So, from my perspective, it's a great time to change jobs. YMMV.

Sorry for not understanding, but I still don't quite get why is it a good time? From the description of your situation it looks like any new job right now is a temporal job. At least that's how I read it.

I mean that everyone who wants to work remotely, now actually has the opportunity to do so, and since everyone is working remote, you are not at a disadvantage based on your remote status. That may change in the future, it may not. But right now, changing jobs doesn't seem like a 'bad time', which is what the parent poster was claiming.

Ah, I see. But I was trying to say that I do not want to change a job right now because of the global uncertainty, not that it is harder for me to do it.

The bigger problem that I've run into is that most employers don't know how to recognize talent.

It seems that wages are a lot lower in lower cost of living areas. So what makes it that a developer in SF is much more expansive than the one in, let's say, Chicago?

Or let's flip it around, move the same developer from Chicago to SF and they will suddenly make more money.

I can only imagine that cost of living is the main factor. Naturally there will be a tiny minority of truly brilliant builders and engineers, but we are not talking about them as they are outliers.

>> So what makes it that a developer in SF is much more expansive than the one in, let's say, Chicago?

One is more likely to have more experience with startups/trendy new tech.

The other could probably work with it, but the other one already has.

The same talent will be hired, they'll just be paid far less if they aren't in a HCOL area because they can be. Businesses don't want to pay more money than they have to and are ultimately in a much, much better position to play hardball than individual ICs, "rockstar" or no.

The fact that some folks think so highly of themselves that they don't believe this to be true in their case is just hubris.

Tech hiring is broken, more than likely they were right under your nose the whole time.

I think for Ops / sysadmin work this is probably more true than general software engineering. Ops people tend to cluster in the bay area more. Probably because Ops work used to be more "physical hands" dealing with physical servers which requires being onsite.

I agree, mostly. The bottom is still decently high even in Midwest cities. But if you’re making $140,000 + RSU/Bonus/Etc., someone from somewhere else will do that job remotely for $100,000 easy.

But I would characterize this as a wealth distribution, and overall net positive for the country. People who don’t have the opportunities to work at the top companies in the Bay Area or NYC or Boston now have better access. And the wages flow to those different areas.

>> wealth distribution

At the moment that may be true but increasing the pool of potential labor rarely results in wealth distribution. I think companies will pay less. That money won't go to other hires as tech companies limit hiring for other reasons than money. The money will go to bottom lines, to stockholders: the opposite of wealth distribution.

A few thoughts:

1. Americans need to buy and hold equities. Period. When Google cuts costs or makes more money, I benefit as a shareholder (or you can hold total market indexes and the like).

2. Maybe the money will go to new hires, capabilities, expenditures, etc. ?

3. Sure, but this is certainly a good arguing point against immigration, population growth and H1-B visa programs and the like.

4. Increase taxes on the wealthy, etc.

One arguing point I'd like to make though is that if this doesn't result in wealth redistribution (companies will pay less and this is fine) should we all begin moving to a few cities?

How much equity would you need to hold to compensate for a 30-40% decrease in wages?

Who is experiencing the decrease in wages? For many Americans the distribution of these jobs to other locations would result in an increase in wages.

Not to mention, the top companies would still hire top talent in a competitive market.

Exactly. This argument that cheaper workforce is out in the sticks, waiting for “remote work” is a lie corporate America has told to keep people in the office.

The truth is, no matter where you are, talent knows what talent is worth. We price accordingly and in the end the market is stable at a certain price level.

We’ve been seeing this over the last decade in major US cities competing for SF-level talent. Tech is one of the highest paid professions. Remote or otherwise. To say companies will just go hire someone cheaper assumes they can find someone cheaper.

In the end I think the real winners are rural America (or Europe or where ever you live). Having a lifeblood of capital come back to small towns and the like will decentralize our cities, improve our quality of life, reinforce the need for infrastructure, and allow innovation to solve those problems.

Exciting times.

Thanks, Gabe.

And I don't think it's SV -> Rural America exclusively. Many of these jobs will filter back into medium to large sized metros across the country. Places like Columbus, Indianapolis, St Louis, Atlanta, Nashville, etc. . There are scores of talented developers in these areas that would be open to remote work, but not relocation to the major metro areas.

Not to mention eastern Europe, South America, Asia, etc.

Is this what is actually happening? We should look at the statistics as to where people move to.

From what I can tell, people are actually mostly moving to other tech hubs (but lower priced) and to high end vacation areas. Think Austin, Denver, Park City Utah, Lake Tahoe, etc... The underlying dynamics are still at play (even tech but to a lesser extent).

Oh no doubt these areas will see an uptick in jobs... but they won’t be the only ones.

200 acre tech village clusters in the mid west that are modern and sustainable islands. They can bring in capital and still not step on the toes of rural America if they don’t want to change the fabric of their society.

It makes me uncomfortable to think tech population from Ca descending onto unsuspecting laid back mid western towns. Integration should be gentle and respectful and with consent.

With consent? Shouldn’t everyone have the right to move where they want? Others it sounds like segregation.

integration of silicon valley values with mid western values.

"talent knows what talent is worth"

This is a pipe dream and quite conceited. Talent is worth what the market will pay for it. No escaping supply and demand. If you no longer need to be in the office, the labor pool is immensely expanded. Unless you think that all the smart people in the world were already working for SF employers.

my fear is that an influx of zoom professionals to places in the desirable parts of 'flyover country' will cause us to repeat the mistakes of sf and seattle in hundreds of times over across the country. most people here were still barely hanging from the recession and now the combination of rapid expansion and quickly rising prices on top of shutdowns is not giving lifeblood to the people who need it, they're being pushed out and the californians are moving in along with big box stores and sodosopa

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoUtoqeEw8U

you can excuse the resentment

Yup, you’re right, we have an existential crisis brewing in rural America with remote work and the influx of residents driving cost of housing up when residents who were there already are still struggling from the recession of 2008.

I don’t have a comment or solution to this problem (is it even a problem?) otherwise I’d suggest something. I’m just observing like others, but I will admit to browsing Zillow for a farm if remote work has staying power. I think being able to provide some stimulus economically from this will help those smaller rural businesses. I don’t know. I’m not qualified in economics to predict the outcome, only some hope and some fear of possibilities.

Current company just released yesterday pay tiers for those that move out of Bay Area and that is about the salary reduction most are looking at.

Aggregate price for talent probably doesn't change. Demand for talent in key markets goes down (as companies in those markets start looking for non-local talent[1]), but demand for talent in any market goes up (as non-local companies seek local talent).

So it would follow that overpriced talent in high-demand markets would see a decrease, where underpriced talent in low-demand markets would see an increase.

This would be the same concerns with offshoring as well, but that hasn't led to massive salary drops. Because there's still a big cost to switching people. If you could fire all your SF SWEs today and replace them with identical, knowledgable, fully-ramped, culture-carried SWEs in $secondary_market for half price, you would. You can't, so you threaten and you try to convince your SF SWE that you could just enough to keep their expectations low, but not so much that they actually quit.

I see a lot of companies still trying the "CoLA trick" on employees moving to secondary markets. "We can hire your position in $market for cheaper," so the argument goes. The best move there is to call their bluff: "go do it then". Most people won't do it because a) conflict is hard and b) finding a new job on top of moving is annoying. So they'll take it on the chin and just resign 6-12 months later after they're settled.

[1] In the old world, there's still a premium to convince talent to relocate. So companies in high-demand markets (e.g., SF) either have to pay +x% to tap non-local talent and get them to move to the high-demand market (where they become local talent).

Even in the new world, non-local talent isn't going to sit by and let themselves be underpaid. "I'm doing the exact same thing, delivering the exact same value, but someone is getting paid 30% more to sit in the office? Oh, and you don't even pay for my home office?"

I do wonder why people assume that the beneficiaries will be American.

You can hire competent Thai or Vietnamese programmers for $20K/year on Upwork, which is a princely sum in their countries. If all you want is someone to implement a spec, they'll do the job just as good or better than any American. Why would you pay $100K/year?

Most markets bifurcate into a commoditized low-end that makes all the volume and a differentiated high-end that makes all the profits. Think Android/iPhone, Windows/Mac, TSMC/Intel, Volkswagon/Porsche, etc. The commodity low-end programmer isn't the guy in Missouri, it's the guy in Minsk or Bangkok. You're either the one making up the specs (which will probably still be in Silicon Valley, because that requires communication and trust more than coding ability), or the one implementing the specs (which can be anywhere, with commensurate wages).

> Increase taxes on the wealthy, etc.

Anyone working for a Silicon Valley company as an engineer is almost certainly considered "the wealthy" by most of America.

Yep.

>> Anyone working for a Silicon Valley

Depending on your definition of wealthy, "anyone working" full stop. A large number of americans do not work (too young/old etc). Others are sick. Many at the top of society don't earn much income (tax voodoo). And automation is coming. If we define "wealthy" as the top 25/15/10% of wage earners, how soon before that is basically just anyone with a fulltime job?

Wealthy is about how much wealth you have, not your income.

In 2020, $121,411 was the median household net worth in the United States. This is up from $97,225.55 in 2017.

The average household net worth in 2020 was $746,821. It was $692,100 in 2017.

The disparity between these two numbers is itself a major problem, but not the point. If you have a net work of $120k you aren't wealthy, even if you earnt that all in the last month.

The way you get from having no wealth to having an average amount is by working harder and earning more. However the tax system is built to punish people who earn more money from work, and reward people who gain more wealth through things like capital gains -- you pay more tax if you increase your wealth by a dollar from working than from the side-effect of being already wealthy and seeing your assets gain value. You're also far more likely to have higher outgoings if you're working (higher cost to live near a high paying job, commuting costs etc)

If you are on the median ohio wage on 37k a year, so $30,427.47 net, and spending 37k to live, your wealth doesn't increase.

If you work an extra 1k, you take home $31,202.47 -- $775, 22.5% tax.

If you make 1k in capital gains, you keep $971, 3% tax.

Look at twice median wage of 74k a year. Take home 57,439.49. Extra $1k will give you 58,109.69, an extra $670 - 33% tax.

Make 1k in capital gains and you pay 18% tax.

Earn 10 times the median wage at $370k and you keep 239,713.20, 42% tax.

Get 1k in capital gains and you keep $764, 24% tax.

https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/

https://www.thebalance.com/breakdown-of-average-monthly-hous...

https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/ohio/

https://smartasset.com/investing/capital-gains-tax-calculato...

You have an interesting thesis here but I think there are some logical consequences you aren’t considering. Prior to COVID the US personal savings rate was under 10%, lower than that of countries like China and India, both of which are materially poorer than the US on a per-capita basis. Relatedly, Americans also have extremely high levels of consumer debt.

When you consider just how low US individual income tax rates are by global standards, it’s obvious that disparities in net worth have a lot to do with the fact that a large share of Americans, regardless of their income, effectively choose to live from paycheck to paycheck on the brink of personal insolvency.

I often hear arguments about capital gains taxes being an unfair advantage, and that it should be taxed the same as income.

But often these arguments don't present a full picture - because it only discusses the end result of the dollar received and compare the tax rates.

What about the risk? A job-income is 100% guaranteed to be received if one worked. Even if the business paying the said wage doesn't make a profit, they still have to pay the wage. The owner cops the loss.

Therefore, to encourage investments, the taxes are lowered on the profits of such type of investment (which is what capital gains are). The person trying to make capital gains income has to take on a risk that a wage earner doesn't, because the capital gains aren't guaranteed.

If capital gains are taxed the same, you will find that there will be less investments, which leads to less jobs and less wealth overall.

The person with a job and the person "risking" their billions in capital are not comparable.

from a financial perspective, the job comes with zero (or near zero) monetary risk.

The person risking "billions" in capital is taking "billions" in monetary risk (the weighting depending on what the investment is - bonds are less risky than shares, for example).

And they stand to gain far more than someone working for $20 an hour.

Over the last 50 years the values of investments have far far outpaced growth in earnings. If a millionaire doesn't invest and make captial gains, what does he do with his money? Keep it in a box under the bed?

> If capital gains are taxed the same, you will find that there will be less investments, which leads to less jobs and less wealth overall.

So you're saying people don't work because they are taxed at a higher rate than capital gains?

well, you can interpret my words in a wrong way to try to make a point, or you can admit that taxation discourages the thing being taxed.

Higher capital gains tax discourages investment. If income tax is higher, it indeed does stop people from working (as much). But we are talking about raising capital gains tax, not raising income tax.

Wealthy people don't need to work to eat, keep a roof over their head, see a doctor, or live a lavish lifestyle.

> 1. Americans need to buy and hold equities. Period. When Google cuts costs or makes more money, I benefit as a shareholder (or you can hold total market indexes and the like).

Yes, but it is not good that your "compensation" will be coming from something that isn't tied to your job performance. Wages at least have some tenuous connection to how well you perform at work.

> 2. Maybe the money will go to new hires, capabilities, expenditures, etc. ?

Based on recent trends, this will not happen.

> 3. Sure, but this is certainly a good arguing point against immigration, population growth and H1-B visa programs and the like.

Yes, definitely.

> 4. Increase taxes on the wealthy, etc.

Yes, or nationalize the banks.

Why is it bad that part of your compensation comes from things that aren't tied to your performance at work?

> Yes, but it is not good that your "compensation" will be coming from something that isn't tied to your job performance. Wages at least have some tenuous connection to how well you perform at work.

It also doesn't account for the fact that these equities can lose substantial value, or may be over-valued.

> Yes, or nationalize the banks.

Re-implement the Glass-Steagall Act, or similar. Nationalization leaves the levers of power in the hands of the wrong people. Keeping commercial and investment banking separate while implementing strong consumer protections was shown to work well in the past. Also, it has shown that the repeal massively reduced the amount of banks (killing competition) so it stands to reason that trend could be reversed and improve the consumer banking experience over time.

> 4. Increase taxes on the wealthy, etc.

This won’t work. When the tech exodus begins, it’s going to cause CA to buckle at its knees because the wealthy has been subsidizing more than 80% of the population. It is not sustainable or healthy at all to suckle at the teat of the wealthy.

We should abolish all taxes and only retain taxes based on consumption. And a flat modest capital gains tax. With dedications gone, this might actually bring in more public money.

Public spending will also decrease if we figure a way out of unfunded pension liabilities. This is huge. Don’t know how it can be resolved.

> the wealthy has been subsidizing more than 80% of the population

CA does not tax wealth, they tax (predominately) income, and I wouldn't be so quick to equate the 2. Prop 13, for example, can mean that wealthy land owners pay almost nothing in tax if they've owned their property for a long time.

> Prop 13

https://www.taxfairnessproject.org/ generally the wealthier you are the bigger your tax cut.

Maybe? But as things are, most of those generous employee salaries are parasitized by NIMBY landlords and property owners in SFBA who have selfishly engineered SF's horrendous housing supply shortage.

If that value is going to be captured by anyone, I would much MUCH rather it be captured by Google shareholders, many of whom are employees and are at least partly responsible for the company's incredible success, than lazy and parasitic SFBA landlords who profit from their own NIMBYism and regulatory predation.

Not maybe, it is supply and demand. IF the supply of remote labor does increase then the share of economic profit going to capital also increases. (i.e. Employers keep more of the profits as opposed to sharing)

This is true both ways though. If you're getting paid 140k, but your rent is 5k a month, you're only capturing 80k of wages, and the landlords are capturing 60k in rent.

If you're working remotely for 100k, and paying 1.7k a month in rent, you're capturing ~80k as well. That means more capital is going to the employers(who saves 40k) at the expense of the landlords (who lose out on that 40k).

I honestly think I'd rather have the capital go to the employers because a) it improves my value in relation to them (I now can argue that I should get paid more, because I bring in 40k a year more value than I did in SV) AND I have a financial interest in the company doing well (with options/RSUs/bonuses/etc).

The money going to the landlords starts to become very literally "rent seeking" where they will capture the capital without providing any productivity gains in return. You could argue that their value in "provide a location for people to live so they can collaborate more effectively" is decreasing with remote work, and they will have to charge less because the value they provide is decreasing.

The bay area is one of the worse places to have rental properties in the country though in terms of ratio of rental income to mortgage costs. If it wasn't for appreciation most would sell instead of try to rent out homes. Landlords aren't making their money from the rents, they are making it from the appreciation.

If a landowner is having trouble making a profit on rent due to high mortgage costs, that just means that the wealth was captured by the previous owner via a high sale price. So the point still stands that a disproportionate amount of wealth is flowing to land instead of capital or labor.

Appreciation is not rent seeking though. Also, savings is what funds capital investment. There's no capital without previous profit.

Appreciation is not rent seeking though.

It most certainly is, if at the same time you're hanging out at city council meetings protesting construction and housing development. The cost of housing in SFBA isn't really the cost of land - its the cost of regulation. It's the marginal cost of building new housing.

Yes, in a competitive market, rent is your cash flow. It pays recurring property taxes, maintenance, and interest. It's a cliche but you really have two opportunities to make money in rental property: when you buy, and when you sell.

The formula is different if you are a home owner, at least it was when there was more appreciation. You don't mind paying a higher mortgage as much if you are capturing a huge chunk of your current salary in home equity each year. Bay area home ownership is where a lot of people made their money.

Until the employer is forced to cut their own prices to stay competitive, and then they aren't making the extra $40K on you anymore.

That's in an academically perfect economic system, and labor is not that. People have been able to get cheap engineering labor from India for decades and wages have still been climbing. Businesses choose who they hire for a variety of reasons and price is only a single factor.

Additionally, labor has a say in what they're paid as well and knowledge of what the average pay is for a given job in their country, region, or city. They can also talk to their fellow employees when they're hired and then push for a hire wage when they find out they're making less then everyone else doing the same job. Just because someone lives in Wisconsin doesn't mean they just accept any offer at a discount simply because HR has a bar chart says they should be paid 35% less then someone else.

The one thing people seem to keep forgetting about when talking about this race to the bottom is how hard it is to find good software authors. My company is fully remote and global and it is still really hard to find good people. I really don't see much of a change given the current unmet, and rising, demand.

Agree with this. If a purely cost driven race to the bottom is inevitable, it already would have happened. I think what’s going on right now increases the competition for roles that some people may have previously had a geographic advantage over others in obtaining, but I don’t think this means that advantage is gone, nor do I think it’s a zero sum game. There may be some downward wage pressure, but if cost was your only motivator as an employer, you were probably already hiring remote teams in low cost markets.

I hear this a lot from employers, but more often than not, they are not willing to offer competitive compensation for the level of talent they wish to attract.

That is just another way of saying that good talent is scarce.

How much does your company pay?

I think you greatly underestimate global talent for some reason.

I think you greatly underestimate the global demand.

> The bottom is still decently high even in Midwest cities

Yes, and I also see the push for remote work also affecting the demand side of the software labor market as well as the supply. There will be even more push for good collaboration/communication work process software. It's still a fast growing market.

Former Texan here! You will not get RSU's or bonuses as an engineer in Texas. You will get cash and insurance. If you doubt me, feel free to go on an interview and ask about those things!

I can tell you there's a reason I left Texas and it's because cash doesn't do to your savings what RSU's and bonuses will.

Companies here in Ohio do both RSU and bonuses. Sometimes one or the other, sometimes a mix as part of total compensation.

I'm an engineer in Austin. We definitely get bonuses and I have RSUs at my current company.

It's good to hear that's changed. When I was in Dallas that was certainly not the case.

As an employer I am looking for an expert who does excellent work. I don't care where he is located and I am willing to pay good money for good work. Experts are a rare resource which will always be expensive no matter where they are located. My 2 ct.

Agreed. Unless the long-term need for software begins to decline, if you are skilled, hard-working, and able to communicate and work well with others, a lot of people will hire you.

It will just continue to bifurcate more. Highly skilled people will still kill. People that mostly benefitted from being in the Bay are fucked. High-end positions outside the Bay pay Bay salaries.

You are spot on and I am surprised that this is often overlooked. The industry is either on the the track to the massive shift how it operates, or, after COVID it comes back to the traditional in office MO.

I'm not sure it's relevant. It's not as if remote options haven't been available for a long time. The wages in San Francisco aren't determined explicitly by cost-of-living, they are determined by the scarcity of availability of the right resources.

Businesses found it necessary to exist in Silicon Valley because it provided certain benefits, and businesses found it necessary to have on-premises employees because it provided certain benefits. Since California won't allow any on-premises anything, the cost-benefit of being in the Valley and having people in the office is being reset. But if your skills and aptitude are scarce, there's no reason to believe wages won't continue to reflect that. And if your skills and aptitude aren't scarce, you were overpaid in the first place.

The support for remote has expanded greatly. Zoom isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than a group of people sitting around a speakerphone or a glitchy skype or WebX call trying to work with a remote person. And if everyone was remote, forget about it it was like getting the planets to align for everyone to be in productive remote communication. Remember spending the first 15 minutes of every conference call just getting everyone online and tech issues settled?

True story, but I feel like that's the fairly distant (in Internet years) past.

I just know that the improved state of affairs has my wife and I dreaming of remote work in a rural area one day soon. Come on Starlink!

I agree, and frankly, at this point, I think the changes did not pass the point of no return. But this depends on whether the vaccines eventually work and for how long, will the virus mutates etc. What I know is that never before the industry had this global "remote operation" training on such a global scale and who knows will it result in changes or it was decided that it's unsustainable and everyone wants to be back to normal asap.

> They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages.

This isn't new, it's already been realized long ago. I've been working remote for ~10 years and there is always a location modifier in the salary.

The SF-based company I work for has already announced wage adjustments for employees who relocate out of the region. They haven't happened yet, but the company has given everyone a "heads up; it's on the table."

Would be odd to expect otherwise. In general, companies are going to pay market rate a.k.a. what they must to attract talent. Someone who has a much lower cost of living may be willing to accept much lower compensation to work for the same company. If you expect the company to continue paying you that much despite a change in your situation you're doomed to disappointment.

My company of about 4000 people ran the numbers after the dust settled from transitioning to remote work, and determined that we're about 30% less productive. This was deemed acceptable, and we've been hiring to close that gap.

It would not surprise me at all if companies became more open to hiring remote employees, but started paying them 20% - 30% less, and extended the offer to transition to WFH (with a salary adjustment) for existing employees as well.

I've worked for several and relocated, nobody ever tried this. I can't imagine a company being so attractive that it would make sense to stay in such a role under the circumstances.

Having had a fairly long tech career working in small, non-SF cities, even getting paid 70-80% of a Bay area salary, I can tell you that this allows you to live very, very well.

Bay area salaries are much larger than most other jobs (tech or not) in small cities. I recall local tech companies offering 1/2 to 1/3 of what you would get paid for average (non-FAANG) work in the Bay. In most smaller cities in the US > $100k is still quite a lot for a household, let alone a single income. If take that income outside of even small towns to more rural areas, $100k can allow you to live very, very well.

Sure eventually we'll see salaries reach an equilibrium, where local tech companies have to offer more and big tech companies will offer less. However, for the next few years, if you're coming from a Bay Area company, you can take a pretty major cut to TC and still live extremely well. You don't have to move to the middle of nowhere for this to be the case either.

Depends on how much you value housing size / quality. You can't get a big house in the Bay Area but if you opt for something smaller you get a lot more disposable income to spend on other luxuries.

Uh...not really. Tiny piece of shit houses built in the 60s still go for a million plus in much of the SFBA. The problem is there's a real housing shortage so there's untenable minimum prices for houses.

At a million dollars you need a fairly large household income to afford luxuries beyond your house. Even putting down 25% on the house with a good 30 year fixed rate loan you'd be looking at just under $4k a month for your mortgage. After utilities you're easily over $4k a month. If you scrimped you could maybe keep your other household costs under $500 a month (realistically you're looking at $1k). So you're looking at a take-home of $4.5-5k to just stay afloat.

That's all for a shitty house that needs work, doesn't have great insulation, and doesn't have a lot of usable space. If you're 30 when you buy they place you only have to keep that income until you're 60 or hope that you build a ton of equity in the meantime and cash out.

That's the minimum for most of the SFBA. There's plenty of places with even more outrageous prices for shitty houses. To buy a house for not completely outrageous prices you need to go pretty far afield with hour plus commutes.

Treating yourself to ramen once a week is not a luxury.

> After utilities you're easily over $4k a month. If you scrimped you could maybe keep your other household costs under $500 a month (realistically you're looking at $1k). So you're looking at a take-home of $4.5-5k to just stay afloat

This is more than accessible to tech workers at public companies. A 150k income is going to be ~7k a month after taxes. Tier one employers pay significantly more than that to new grads, and pretty much everyone reputable in the bay pays more than that to experienced people. So yeah, single income can absolutely afford a home.

Obviously someone with student loans can't do that as quickly, but otoh a dual income family could put $2M down in cash before they turn 30 given moderate success. (Or another way of looking at this is a moderately successful mid-20s SWE can bank 100k/yr after all expenses and retirement savings, without budgeting strictly. That's ridiculous)

Who is offering new grads $150k regularly? What new grad making $150k is going to qualify for a loan on a million dollar house? Where are they getting a down payment? Where are they saving up hundreds of thousands with $3-4K rents before other expenses? How the shit is a dual engineer income saving up $2m in cash by the time they're 30 even with no student loans?

A SWE in their 20s banking $100k a year? Must be nice.

> Who is offering new grads $150k regularly?

Google, Amazon (and subsidiaries like Twitch), Microsoft (and subsidiaries like Github), Facebook, Linkedin, Stripe, Square, Lyft, Uber, Snap, Oracle, Apple, Dropbox, Box, Nvidia, Twitter, Slack, Salesforce, ByteDance and a slew of others. And I'm including only companies that pay out 150K in cash equivalents (cash + annual bonus + liquid stock) in that list.

After a promotion, that list probably doubles in size.

> What new grad making $150k is going to qualify for a loan on a million dollar house?

I don't think I ever suggested this. What I did suggest is that someone who graduates at 22 or 23 (and, with the big caveat that they do so with little to no existing debt), gets a 150K starting comp, and has even a modest amount of career growth will be able to save a whole bunch of money in their late twenties.

> A SWE in their 20s banking $100k a year? Must be nice.

Like I said, its absolutely ridiculous.

I doubt it, software is eating the world, there aren't enough engineers and we see productivity gains like the cloud where you can basically run a global scale business with just a handful of people. We will probably see more of those companies than less.

when the work is remote we don’t need remote-california to save 10% on wages. we will go to remote-ukraine or estonia and hire twice as many engineers

Companies could already outsource their development to Estonia or Ukraine (and done do) but there are many hidden costs to this.

They already do!! Still not enough engineers.

And then you would be committing the classic blunder. Putting more engineers on a late project makes it later.

You are really late to this party, this has been happening since the late 90s.

As talented as the Ukrainian or Estonian engineers might be you're unlikely to see any real savings over time. Just scheduling things a full work day apart in time zones is really difficult. Effectively communicating is even more difficult. Then there's stupid little shit like one machine in a remote office set to a different locale than the main office that breaks things in stupid ways.

Engineering throughput definitely doesn't scale linearly with the size of the engineering team. Good on you for never having managed to have heard of Fred Brooks though.

> employers also realize they can have employees work from home.

I think it's even worse than that. Once they realize that you're working from home, why wouldn't they hire someone much cheaper abroad?

I hope I'm wrong but I think in less than 5 years people will regret this WFH thing.

If this was an option they would have already outsourced the work.

It becomes a lot easier as an office becomes remote-first, and adopts the changes necessary to make that work well. There's no longer that barrier between the in-person and remote teams.

It is an option and they will, it will start slowly though. First offering a job to someone out of state. Maybe they save some money and the next hire, they look à little further and they pick up an employee from another English speaking country, they save even more salary. The more these tests work out the more companies will expirement. Eventually hiring an American will seem unnecessary and costly if you're distributed anyways.

It's great news for non-Americans though, USD goes a long way in a lot of the world.

Last time I was at a company that tried that, the (US-based) management would fight over making sure their projects went to the US-based devs (even if not in the same office) vs the overseas devs because the communication gap - timezones and physical distance both - was that bad.

Zoom hasn't fixed this.

They’ve tried countless times for the last 30+ years. It has not ended well.

Maybe this time is different with the advent of better online collaboration tools. But these tools do little to help with real-time communication across time zones and language barriers.

I've seen a lot of predictions for "races for the bottom" over the years, and yet it's hard to remember one that actually happened.

Economies usually don't work like that.

Even if some version of that happens, it will still pay off to move out of SF.

I think one of the big problems in the US is that growth and wealth are concentrated to a few hyper rich coastal cities, where most people can't afford to move. While large parts of the country is relatively impoverished.

If that ends up being spread around more evenly, I think that's only good. Even if I personally might get a pay cut.

Economic growth would come from bringing other areas up, not dragging the coasts down.

>I think one of the big problems in the US is that growth and wealth are concentrated to a few hyper rich coastal cities, where most people can't afford to move. While large parts of the country is relatively impoverished.

This statement can be generalized to:

"I think one of the big problems in the world is that growth and wealth are concentrated to a few hyper rich countries, where most people can't afford to move. While large parts of the world are relatively impoverished."

It's worse when you generalize it to countries, because "can't afford to move" becomes "is not allowed by law to move".

It has already happened for manufacturing. Now US still is home to lot of high end manufacturing. But the point it no longer offers middle class living to millions of Americans.

Now I do understand that of software people believe that programing is somehow special and can't be done in effective manner remotely or third world site at far lower cost.

I have few observations here:

1) With massive proliferation of frameworks the creative/ intellectual input is increasing minimal for most of commercial work. And that's where most of the software devs are employed.

2) A lot of work is low quality that companies do not care because same mentality of cheap use and throw stuff is prevailing now for enterprise apps as it is for consumer stuff.

3) Looking at lot of software produced by top valley companies is buggy, bloated and feels generally crappy. I do not believe all of it is just due to companies' strategy of being first to market. A lot of it seems because of same low quality CRUD peddlers who fill office floors of fortune 500 companies.

> Now I do understand that of software people believe that programing is somehow special and can't be done in effective manner remotely or third world site at far lower cost.

I've spent decades among software people and never heard this said.

The outsourcing to India etc is 2+ decades old already FFS! What impact it's had on US wages is hard to say, but it's been very good for a lot of third world engineers!

>They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages.

The reason they pay “SF wages” is because they can’t hire talent at other prices, not because of some goodness of the heart. While total talent pool might be slightly expanded with people who didn’t want to move to SF previously, overall it’s not going to be a big shift.

For talent that needs to come to live and work in the Bay Area. Remove that need, suddenly wages are normalized for the area the talent lives in.

Yeah, that's my concern. It would be different if I was wanting to buy a house. I actually like my apartment in the bay area, but when the office did shut down I looked at what it would cost. I wouldn't save much money because I wanted to stay in California.

My employer is becoming more WFH friendly. But they are explicitly saying post-covid fulltime remote will require an adjustment for base salary and future equity grants. I don't think that would be a good financial decision for me. Even if my compensation didn't get cut I would probably end up needing to take a pay cut or move if I wanted to change jobs.

>require an adjustment for base salary and future equity grants

Base salaries are pretty sticky downwards. It wouldn't be surprising to see modest formal geo-based adjustments of base salaries and much larger quiet adjustments of equity grants--which tend to be much less transparent. It will obviously vary by company but, to the degree in-office becomes largely optional, it's reasonable to expect comp tends towards something more equalized--at least within the US.

Ludicrous comment. The US has many fabulous university CS programs.

Most CS graduates and interns I have hired and worked with I have been pretty happy with. Granted I'm disappointed CS is turning more into programming as a craft and less on the mathematical thinking necessary for true innovation to happen, but from an economics perspective it makes sense to hire programmers over theoreticians.

There are many immigrants in US getting paid US wages who graduated from non-US colleges. Companies in other countries need to start paying US wages and stop exploiting developers.

Maybe not entirely - those SF-area in demand jobs will hopefully demand their current or near-current wages. The company valued their work at pay $x.

If only there was some kind of organization in which tech workers could "unify".

> They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages . . . I predict a race for the bottom.

Remote companies that attempt to race for the bottom will be at a huge competitive disadvantage against remote companies that don't. Over time, they'll learn and adapt (or they'll die).

The biggest misconception about remote work is that remote work is good because don't have to pay bay area salaries. When you do that, you're broadening your talent pool, and you're then limiting yourself to the bottom half of it.

When you pay Silicon Valley salaries (or higher) for remote work, you broaden your talent pool to the entire world, and then you get to select from the very top tier. We've been doing this for years, now, and it still feels like an undiscovered gold mine hiding in plain sight.

If that is truly the result then I what comes from this will be a lot more young companies and competition at the startup level- if you can't pull in a reasonable tech salary why bother making someone else rich?

what happens if everyone goes back to the office in a year and now you're the only remote employee?

Yes, this is what I worry about too.

I've been hearing remote work is the future for many years now, but haven't seen much movement toward the goal.

Now, we are in a pandemic and everyone is forced to be at home, not by choice, but by necessity.

Everyone is still saying remote work is now accelerated, but no one had a choice if they wanted to work remotely or not...

Of course there will be some increase in remote working after the pandemic, but I think the vast majority is going to return to the office.

Not because they can't work from home, but just because they don't want to work from home.

Agreed, people are way overestimating the impact of this. Most people I know can't wait for life to go back to normal.

It's easy to move away when everyone is forced to. But when you need that new promotion when office life is back and someone else there is networking...you just gonna stay back in Tulsa? Doubtful.

This is indeed what will likely happen given how many people actually don't love working full time remote. So all these media stories will swing the other way afterwards. Also way easier to cut people when you don't have to see them in the office every day.

> There just aren’t good reasons to live here anymore for so many of us

The majority of people that say this are also the exact reason why the city is blackhole of culture and fun. You aren't in traffic, you are the traffic.

I am likewise on my way out the door, not quite to the giving notice stage but not far either.

Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places.

Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/out-in-the-united-states-where-can... and see if anything's changed since I last checked.

Nobody really brings up the general art and culture scene in SF and Oakland. Or access to extremely high quality produce and food.

Generally nobody brings up the possibility that some people _want to be here_ outside of their jobs. It's weird.

I guess most of those that want to be here don't really comment on articles like this.

>Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car

I'm not sure what bay area are you talking about. The SF bay area is absolutely unmanageable without a car, unlike Portland or Seattle.

That's an interesting observation, though I think you've missed the effect of scale. Keep in mind, a one block town would be 100% accessible by a public transportation system consisting of a horse drawn carriage on permanent loop.

More of Portland is accessible by public transportation than the SF Bay Area, but then again, in absolute terms, there's notably less Portland to be accessed. I'd say that what you can access on public transportation in the SF Bay Area vastly exceeds what you can access in Portland, mainly because the SF Bay Area is far, far, bigger. There's also a lot more that you can't access in the SF Bay Area (and if you work in tech, you may be forced to access it).

One way to illustrate this would be to overlay a public transportation map on top of population density map based on census tracks. You'll see that there are far more high density census areas in SF/Oakland serviced by light rail, subway, bus systems, and so forth than in Portland, and that the areas connected offer vastly more in the realm of commerce, entertainment, arts, sports. The same will be true of Seattle was well.

At some point the basic maintenance of law and order (or conversely the refusal to do so) takes precedence over walkability or the local art and culture scene. As for tolerance, West Coast cities are rapidly developing a social and political milieu that is openly hostile towards the tech industry to a much greater degree than Austin or Miami (to name two examples from the article) are hostile to LGBT people.

Are you really saying that it's harder to be a techie than LGBT in San Francisco?

Victimization narratives are intoxicating. A lack of diversity in experiences will lead some down narrow paths.

In principle I agree with you--this is one of the biggest pathologies of our time.

I can't speak to San Francisco, but in Seattle at least, I never saw any flyers or graffiti telling LGBT people they were unwelcome and should leave town, nor did I ever encounter political discourse that LGBT people were somehow ruining the city, or scapegoating the LGBT community for local issues. So in my personal experience as an LGBT software engineer, I wouldn't be surprised if San Francisco was the same way.

I bike by "Go Home Tech Bro" stickers on stop signs pretty frequently in Seattle

Me too, and in 2014 someone tried to burn down Neighbors with hundreds of people inside, and before the pandemic gay couples reported being harassed and assaulted for walking down the street in Capitol Hill, and I heard more than one guy entering different bars (again, in Capitol Hill) cautiously check that this bar didn't have GAY PEOPLE, right? So I think the idea that tech people are less welcome than gay people is a horrendously uninformed one.

When I lived in SF it was socially acceptable to openly degrade tech workers. Nancy Pelosi's daughter went on TV and called SF tech workers "vermin" and "invaders" and described the presence of tech works as an "infestation". Open hostility and dehumanization is condoned. In no way did I feel oppressed, but it did come off as tone deaf the way people on one breath say stuff like that and in the next complain about how tech workers weren't invested in the community.

Yeah it's so tough being a tech worker. I feel almost as oppressed as the billionaires.

Who said anything about oppression? I just don't think anyone wants to live and work in a place where they are unwelcome and unwanted.

The post you're replying to literally says "in no way did I feel oppressed"

> Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car.

Is this true? I've only visited the bay for a total of 15 days but only SF and parts of Oakland seemed walkable.

I spent almost 2 decades biking in SF. It's the best way to get around.

There are suburban "downtowns"/shopping districts near many BART and Caltrain stops where it's quite possible to commute and do most everyday errands on foot/bike/transit. Possibly even easier than a lot of the southwestern half of SF proper. (Having no access to a car at all - through friends or a willingness to use Lyft/Uber - does make some things harder). The older and higher-density suburbs tend to be better for this: for instance downtown San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Berkeley, Pleasanton. You pay for the privilege though, and I'm not sure that it's _that_ unique nationally?

The walkable parts of those cities is vanishingly small, on the order of a few square blocks. The tiny walkable segment is also super-expensive.

Berkeley's walkable area is actually pretty extensive. The others are less so.

Berkeley's walkable area encompasses all of Telegraph Avenue down to Ashby (Berkeley Bowl) (South), all of downtown (West), the perimeter of the UC Berkeley campus and the campus itself, and probably half way down University avenue (further West), the North Berkeley area to the north of downtown Berkeley (Chez Panisse, etc...) (North). If you like walking, you can walk from campus all the way to the Bay. If you like hiking, you can hike up part of the way to the LBL. San Pablo Ave is also walkable but wasn't as ritzy.

The inaccessible directions are NE and E. W was considered ghetto but has gentrified. The only parts harder to walk are up in the hills (pretty much impossible: narrow, windy, steep, no sidewalks) (E) and the hilly parts of North Berkeley (NE).

The problem with Berkeley is that you can’t get to other areas quickly. BART and the Bay Bridge sucked pre pandemic.

That statement is true. The Bay Area is a place you can live without a car (namely by living in SF or parts of Oakland or Berkeley, or in many downtowns near a BART or Caltrain station).

I lived in 4 different apartments in SF in 4 different neighborhoods, each for 1 year. (Haight/Ashbury, SoMa, Potrero, and Castro).

Where I lived in Potrero and SoMa was absolutely not walkable. Potrero was particularly bad because any amount of walking meant climbing a very, very long and steep hill - as in by the time you make it up, you're sweating like crazy.

Castro and Haight/Ashbury were walkable, but nowhere as walkable as a city like NYC.

The middle ground for me was a motorcycle. Easy to park anywhere. Cheap. Great gas mileage, etc.

I had roommates working for Cisco in SoMa who took the bus to work. That was a constant topic of frustration for him. He ended up getting a motorcycle too because of the commute.

Well, if you consider South Bay, that's not true. Spent one summer interning at IBM, living in South San Jose (capital expressway). Had an absolutely horrible time. Even getting a bottle of milk was 2 mile walk. Buses were once every hour.

Agreed, South Bay is a wasteland if you don't have a car. I tried really hard to bike around, but even that only goes so far, especially in the summer. I'm assuming OP meant SF proper, since even Oakland is hardly walkable if you live anywhere but the downtown area.

I co-oped at IBM in south San Jose as well. My roommates also co-oped at IBM and either rode bikes like I did or had a car. We would ride our bikes to the light rail which were a little more frequent than once an hour. We also rode our bikes to the CalTrain station.

It's definitely not walkable. It's marginally bikeable. Biking was problematic because of the lack of bike lanes and the poor lighting. Light rail and CalTrain were quite accommodating to bikes.

Some people don't care about those things, but do care about how big their house is, how many cars fit in the garage, and how much they (and their kids) look like the people (and schools) around them. To be fair when I was living "rural", I loved being only 45min from a 24hr Walmart, and I've lived as a minority, which doesn't feel great so I get going back from whence you came.

But I'm still going to say, what you didn't... good riddance. If you came just for the money and the ambiance a generation of intellectuals and artists created before you came, and you aren't willing to contribute to it? Leave, I'll be as happy to see you go as I was in 2001. If the pandemic (and lack of cool bars for a year) is all it takes, maybe people who give a damn will be able to move back in. Maybe that's not what created the wealth, but it sure did make it a nice place to hang anyway.

My personal guess is that a lot of those "creatives" that are moving to Hawaii/Sacramento/etc for 6 months (or a year) will be back, and if not, I hope they enjoy the place they choose to make home.

Yes, though it would be painful in the short term I think a "correction" in bay-area cost of living would be a good thing in the long term because more than one type of person would be able to afford to live there.

> I loved being only 45min from a 24hr Walmart

Perhaps I'm misreading you, but having to drive 45mins to get to a shop seems like a massive inconvenience!

Yes, I was living rural (trying to write my dissertation without distractions) and 45min was wonderfully close! My mail was most of a mile away, and the closest "convenience store" was ~5 miles. I never thought I would say that I loved being "near" a 24hr walmart (it was also where the farmers market was held), but after 6 months you learn how important that is. I will say that the ability to buy RAM, HD, Monitor, etc along with groceries at 3am (with a 30day return warranty) was also pretty amazing.

Try getting more RAM in SiliValley or SF at 3am today!

It sounds like you have spent real time in vanishingly few places in the U.S.

With regard to LGBT protections -- as a queer person I've experienced vibrant, proud and welcoming communities all over the place. Midwest (Twin Cities, Columbus, Chicago) south (New Orleans, Atlanta). Not to diminish the importance of making progress, but your actual life is highly unlikely to be affected by whatever laws are still on the books in certain areas. There are millions of happy, successful LGBT people all over the country.

I agree on almost all of your points with a few caveats. - Cars : The Bay Area is very walkable but that’s mainly SF. The tech burbs of Palo Alto , Menlo Park are not super walkable and you are relying on the BART and other public transport . But Covid has destroyed public transport and cuts in funding threaten them further.

LGBT : This is not really the 80s and 90s . Most big cities from DC, Atlanta, Austin ,Chicago, Phoenix, Miami have strong LGBT presence . And a lot of racial heterogeneity there too.

Art and Culture: Almost all artists that I met in Austin, Chicago , Miami , Portland , Asheville left the Bay Area . They were priced out by tech . Everything is tech in the Bay Area . Even artists have to align or suck up to tech .

High quality food: Yes, again a lot of other cities are replicating that.

The Bay Area is truly great and very beautiful . But I cannot constantly hustle at 45 while raising 2 kids , pay a million dollars for a shack . I am sort of tired of constantly competing and hustling . I am tired of being told that we are counter culture since we are not Wall Street bro’s but I need a million dollars for a 1950s 2 bedroom house .

Agree on all counts, just putting Seattle out there as another city with a strong LGBT presence.

Can't speak for other cities, and maybe not even Chicago today, but when I lived there, there was a lot of diversity in the loop (the downtown business district) during the workday, but beyond that it was a very segregated city.

Also, though I did own a car, I really only used it on weekend trips out of town. If I had stayed long-term, I would have sold it, because it's expensive to own one there (parking is expensive unless you want to gamble on finding a spot on the street, and there are extra city taxes on gas and registration). Chicago is pretty walkable and has usable mass transit.

Chicago is pretty segregated, but the transit situation is easily the best of any major US city. A car helps you get places quicker, but an adventurous person can get all over the city easily on the buses and trains and any given neighborhood is very walkable.

The main issue is the cold. You have 3 months of amazing summer and 8 months of cold with two weeks of spring and fall on either end. If you're not from the Midwest, it can really wear on you and bring you down.

Cold is fine.

Getting robbed at gunpoint isn't. That's the real Chicago you have to contend with.

Never happened to me or my friends. And apparently there's less poop on the sidewalks than SF.

I don't know anyone that died of Covid. I wash my hands and are not walking around in Chicago.

I have no plans to live in fear and plan to walk around downtown Chicago in the future.

Happened to a friend across the street from University of Chicago 2 weeks ago.

Only place I’ve been robbed is SF (Tenderloin, 2002). Only place I’ve had my car broken into is SFBA (Berkeley 2008, San Jose and SF in 2018).

And Chicago has nearly 6x as many violent crimes per year as Oakland or San Francisco and still edges them out on property crime.

Is that per captia?

Chicago is less than 6x bigger than San Francisco or Oakland.

SF, yes (“only” 3x bigger), but Chicago is more than 6x the population of Oakland.

I'm just asking for accurate statistics.

Crime-wise (and on many quality of life issues), Chicago is like 3 cities in one: - a rich, extremely safe city (broadly, greater Loop and north/northwest sides) - a poor, unsafe city (south and west sides) - a middle income, very average city (the more suburban, far northwest, south, and southwest area)

Your experience will vary greatly, depending on which areas you visit.

It also has more than triple the population of SF, or twice as many people as SF+Oakland combined, so any absolute (as opposed to per-capita) numbers aren't comparable.

As someone how has lived in both cities, I can say I felt unsafe way more often in SF than Chicago. Chicago's crime is gang related and isolated to a part of the city kind of disconnected from the main hub. But in SF the craziness is in the nice areas, I have had to deal with way too many violent mentally unstable people there, in fact I remember one of the two years I lived there a British woman randomly got a kitchen knife jabbed through her skull. In SF you're dealing with a large number of seriously mentally ill going to and from work.

As someone who has lived in several of the places topping the crime charts in the US, I want to tell you that this comment stinks of privilege.

In Chicago you were able to afford to live somewhere isolated from the reality of most Chicagoans.

In San Francisco you have so thoroughly priced everyone out that there isn't anywhere for the lower classes to go and so the bullshit is everywhere for everyone to deal with. Boo hoo.

Most big cities are segregated, both economically and racially—and the economic segregation amplifies the racial segregation.

The exodus of middle class Black and Hispanic people from high cost urban areas drives some crazy income distributions in places like San Francisco: https://statisticalatlas.com/place/California/San-Francisco/.... If your apartment building, restaurants, etc., are places mainly populated by those making over $100k/year, there will be a vanishingly small number of Black people in those places. (See table 10). Contrast somewhere like Atlanta, where a third of households making $75-100k/year (a very comfortable income in that city) are Black.

Phoenix and the surrounding area also has a decent LGBT presence.

And SF wrt cars only to some degree. I know a couple who decamped to SF and sold their cars when their kids got older. They do indeed live without owning cars. They also use Ubers, ZipCars, and regular rental all the time.

I think a lot depends on what you're used to. I think a lot of folks accept the limited mobility they knew through school when they graduate. It becomes less acceptable as they get older. Many exceptions of course.

You can make a lot of things work in a lot of places. I have lived in both Dallas and Houston without a car, for example (but also Berlin, Santiago, Tokyo, so I have comparison points). If you don't have kids, and have the freedom to plan a bit around where you live and work, you won't really feel like you're missing anything. I would take a trip via Lyft twice a month to some venue that's further away than the bike/rail/bus combo could get me, but that's about all.

TBH though, I'm mostly not interested in "making things work" if I have more convenient options. At one point, I spent a lot of time in Houston and I absolutely needed a car--for my job if nothing else. But even living in New Orleans at that time I absolutely needed a car for my job.

What’s a good neighborhood or two in Houston where it’s possible to do this?

The easiest in terms of pure transit is the corridor in Midtown along the Red Line. From about Alabama up to Downtown. Second is Montrose which for some people will have a cooler vibe.

Within Midtown, the further North you go, there are a few more bars/clubs that make noise at night, so either live further South, live a few blocks East or West of the rail, or both. Huge amounts of apartment stock just came online in the last 3 years there, so you might get a solid rent deal somewhere? For me personally, being able to walk to a grocery store is always key anywhere in the world: shop every 2-3 days on the way home from work, only buy what I need, less waste. That area has two grocery stores: Randall's and Whole Foods.

Montrose is the other top spot. For me it is the #1 example of how Houston's lack of zoning can shine (versus other areas where it is a detriment). Fantastic local retail interspersed among every-other residential block. Montrose is a large-ish area and every half mile can be a slightly different "feel", but there are great options to rent newer apartments, older apartments, or rent spacious, cheap, historical houses close to things like Menil Park, or the big restaurant scene along Westheimer. Sadly the Kroger at Hawthorne is closing, but the huge HEB is dead-center of Montrose. East a bit and you're near Trader Joe's. If you're anywhere along Westheimer, the 82 bus goes to to Midtown Whole Foods and if you're along West Gray the 32 bus goes to the Kroger near River Oaks. The whole area always has things happening (check the pinboards at Inversion or Black Hole), and is next door to Midtown for even more.

If Downtown would get a larger grocery store with slightly more affordable staples (no offense to Phoenecia), and have it close-ish to where the rail lines meet, the entirety of Downtown would immediately become more viable (imo). I have friends both in Downtown, and in the Heights (solid bike culture there), but they eat out more than I do. The Heights started getting expensive ten years ago and doesn't look to stop, but it's still an option.

In about 5 years I think the Greater East End will be another great walkable/bikeable region (the actual East End, not EaDo), so depending where along the gentrification curve you prefer to live (before, during, after) it might be worth checking out now.

Thanks so much, appreciate it

>They do indeed live without owning cars. They also use Ubers, ZipCars, and regular rental all the time.

Is there that much of a difference between owning a car and renting a car or using Zip or having a chauffer (Lyft, Uber, taxis) tote you around? I'd get rid of my car too if I could afford to have Uber haul me everywhere.

I guess it still works out for them. They also rent their parking space to someone else. And he rides a bike, etc. And they use public transit. But, yeah, it's dependent on having a number of car options also available.

>Is there that much of a difference between owning a car...? I'd get rid of my car too if I could afford to have Uber haul me everywhere.

With reference to my sibling comment, definitively yes. I personally spent less on a handful of Lyft rides per month in Houston than I did on insurance alone when I owned a car. Never mind the cost of the vehicle itself, gas, any repairs...

Even adding in the cost of my rail and bus rides, still doesn't come close to the cost of a vehicle.

But SF is one of the most expensive living cost, so I suspect that spending for cars isn't much issue.

Before I sold my car, I spent more on parking (in my apartment) than I did in an average month if ride-sharing.

And use home delivery! You outsourced the car dependency to poor gig workers.

Parking in SF tends to really suck, and at least if you take an Uber you don't need to circle the neighborhood for half an hour to find a spot.

> Is there that much of a difference between owning a car and renting a car or using Zip

The cost of owning a car in California including maintenance, fuel, parking, registration, smog check, etc. can be upwards of $10K per year. At least it was for me when I owned a car.

I walk most places and use car share or rent as necessary. I do not spend $10K per year on car share and rentals.

Literally, YMMV.

>Is there that much of a difference between owning a car and renting a car or using Zip or having a chauffer (Lyft, Uber, taxis) tote you around? I'd get rid of my car too if I could afford to have Uber haul me everywhere.

It's a difference in frequency of use. In Seattle, a lot of my friends don't have cars, but use Rideshare/rentals when they need it. If you are using it a couple times a week, pretty easy to stay under the cost of car ownership when you factor in insurance/parking/maintenance etc.

Is there a general belief that San Francisco is a counter cultural place?

Only by some San Franciscans who've been sniffing their own farts for too long.

Everyone else thinks that The Bay is culturually homogenous.

If I said something bad about "red necks" or other such subcultures people would get angry and indignant. But somehow it's become OK to make disparaging comments like that about San Franciscans.

Rednecks and San Franciscans aren't protected classes of people.

Huh? I wasn't talking about legal stuff.

It matters. People won't make fun of protected classes because they might be cancelled and possibly even land in jail some day if some people get their way with our laws. Anything not against the law or against the cultural norms is free game for making fun of.

As someone living in the Midwest, I assure you that we do get slandered far more often than San Franciscans and no one bats an eye.

Huh, I don't think I've ever heard any bad midwestern stereotypes.

It’s pretty dangerous to go against the culture these days. I’ve been singled out for trying to stay out of PC culture. Backed into a coroner of either actively agree with everything PC or “consequences”.

"Backed into a coroner" is, I presume, a typo, but it does very well at communicating the sense of danger...

I thought it wss a play on words for sure

It's okay, most of them don't walk the walk. They're all about it right up to the point that you suggest that poor people deserve decent jobs with a decent commute. Then they go straight to frothing at the mouth and incoherent shouting.

What I'm saying is turn it around on them.

At one time, San Francisco was very bohemian and very counter cultural. The Electric KoolAid Acid Test has its genesis in San Francisco. As do the Grateful Dead, the summer of love, and many other parts.

You can still find many vestiges of this, like all the head shops and very non mainstream things in the Haight Ashbury, but the reality is that it is far less of a counter-cultural mecca today than it was fifty, or even twenty, years ago.

The reputation is taking a long time to catch up to that reality though.

It was when half the set list for woodstock lived in Haight Ashbury.

Even smaller towns, like Asheville (where I am now), have a huge LGBTQIA+ presence. I moved from DC, which was pretty gay, and I feel like it's even more super gay here.

Presence, sure. What about legal protections around seemingly trivial daily things like bathroom use? Family planning services focusing on the needs of LGBT families? Doctors who have experience with LGBT patients, whom these patients can trust and talk to candidly? Churches that welcome LGBT members without pressuring them to change fundamental aspects of their lives? Mental health specialists that cater to LGBT needs? People who are visibly out (or trans) in the workplace and talk about their loved ones without discomfort? Support for children and adolescents with diverse identities?

There's a world of difference between "yeah, we have gay people" and being a place where LGBT people can build happy, stable lives.

Children don’t have diverse identities. I used to think I was Batman, my mate used to think he was black. Impressionable children are impressionable.

Case in point.

What a world when people can attack then rejection of child abuse and that’s socially acceptable.

Jesus.

A caveat on the caveat about cars - I live without a car in the suburbs just fine (Sunnyvale). YMMV, but for me a car would be more of a nice to have. I'll probably get one in a few years anyway after maybe buying a house here, but it's not something I view as an urgent expense.

the article referenced was from 2016... many of the LGBT issues presented are still real concerns.

> The Bay Area is very walkable but that’s mainly SF. The tech burbs of Palo Alto , Menlo Park are not super walkable and you are relying on the BART and other public transport .

Even SF is not very walkable compared to Chicago, DC, Philly, Boston, etc. (All significantly cheaper than SF.) Even by American standards, the BART is a pretty second-rate metro. (And that's not even counting the fact that nowadays it's essentially unsafe at night, for single women, etc.)

To push back a bit: SF proper must have the best bus system of any city in the US. It's possible to get pretty much anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, even late at night, with just a quick bus ride or two. I won't say MUNI is perfect but it's doing a lot of things right. Anyone who thinks BART is synonymous with SF's inner city transportation is really not making their way around the city by transit.

I don’t live in the US but have been to a few US cities for work. San Diego was horrendous without a car. DC was very good, even though when I travelled there had been heavy snow.

I’ve been to SF twice in the last three years. My impression of SF’s public transport (and to be honest, walking around parts of it too) was that I did not feel very safe using the MUNI buses, especially at night. I saw on the news that a British guy got stabbed near my hotel a week after I left the first time.

On one occasion I also witnessed a bus driver drive past a guy in a wheelchair in the middle of the day. Someone on the bus challenged them on that and I vividly remember that she said “I ain’t lettin no cripple pee pee all over my bus.”

The BART was much better but obviously is more limited in where it goes.

On the other hand, MUNI is incredibly overcrowded along certain lines now, and conditions on the buses are often filthy (though perhaps that's common in all dense large U.S. cities).

Not true, your seeing what you want to see.

> Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/out-in-the-united-states-where-can... and see if anything's changed since I last checked.

I'm not sure how often that article gets updated, but this Wikipedia article[1] has maps that are regularly updated and is a good reference for anyone who is LGBT, or has LGBT family members, and is looking to relocate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...

The vast majority of the bay area is typical sprawling American suburbs that absolutely requires a car.

The cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley are about the only walkable places where it's feasible at all to not have a car, and even then significant parts of those cities are not walkable.

Chicago and NYC do car-free better than the Bay Area, where not owning a car is really only viable in SF and a few small surrounding communities.

SF has a phenomenal climate though in comparison. The public transportation is lacking but I mind walking or bike a lot less in SF winters as opposed to NYC winters.

I biked to work nearly every day in NYC. The weather really isn't that bad.

And in NYC if ever I had some other obligation after work instead of my usual commute that was bikeable to. In California nearly every time an errand popped up I couldn't bike that day.

"Really isn't that bad" is your experience. The physical reality is that average January lows in NYC are 20 degrees lower than in SF.

Agreed. It's definitely doable in the winter but is objectively less "easy" (have to pull out/put on weather gear) and more dangerous (lower visibility when it's snowing or raining, and fewer cyclists are out in general so cars don't expect you as much).

I didn't bike when it was raining or snowing but was still able to bike many more days than in California because after work errands didn't wreck my whole plan.

> The physical reality is that average January lows in NYC are 20 degrees lower than in SF.

The physical reality is that 20 degrees lower isn't that bad. Humans have thrived in colder climates for thousands of years. Being a human being in a modern day NYC/Chicago winter is a cakewalk, unless you are among the small subset of people who treat anything below 60F like its a death sentence.

Are you arguing that a majority of people prefer winter weather in NYC to winter weather in SF?

The initial claim up-thread was "SF has a phenomenal climate though in comparison."

Sure, but SF is temperate year-round. Winter weather cycling's definitely doable but I immensely prefer cycling in SF year round, where I don't have to plan ahead or remember any warm gear. And I find not being able to bike for errands surprising, unless you lived outside of SF proper? I exclusively ran errands walking/biking/by bus for several years.

And Boston and DC. I wouldn't live in SF without a car unless I was a biking enthusiast.

Also I find that many people who proudly refuse to own a car in SF just end up ubering everywhere.

To be clear I (the original poster in this thread) have lived without a car in the bay area for almost a decade, and I don't Uber anywhere.

NYC is definitely more walkable--and just as expensive. Boston is about as walkable, I think (I haven't spent much time there)--and also pretty expensive!

>Boston is about as walkable

Boston is definitely walkable. My wife and I shared a car when living there, and I'd literally go weeks without actually getting in the car (she worked in a suburb, so she needed it for daily driving). Everything was generally within 1/2 mile, including school for the kiddo, sports fields, parks, grocery, hardware, etc. Transit was also convenient and plentiful.

Idk. Pre-covid, I probably used Uber/Lyft two days a month.

Some people do "Uber Everywhere", but I mostly biked/baywheels/muni.

I disliked almost everything about SF when I lived there. Literally the only thing keeping there was my job.

It’s a great city for some. If you like it - I do hope you enjoy it and stay for as long as you wish.

I have long left and prefer other states like Texas and the South. It’s more my style.

This is why I'm moving to Vancouver, BC.

Safe, walkable, low pollution, high density of tech co's, beautiful people.

And even more expensive, when you factor in that us Canadian tech workers on the whole get paid much less, and Vancouver real estate is sky high.

Nice city though.

> Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/out-in-the-united-states-where-can... and see if anything's changed since I last checked.

This analysis is shallow and has a thumb on the scale in favor of California. The author says of same-sex marriage: “There is much talk at the federal level by the presumed GOP candidate of creating legislation that would remove this right federally. I will not relocate to a state where my marriage could not be recognized.” Even if that was possible, why doesn’t that cross California off the list? Californians went to the trouble of overturning a state Supreme Court ruling to make same-sex marriage illegal, in 2008. It was illegal right up until Obergefell wiped out all such laws in 2015.

Folks in California might be surprised about what the rest of the country is really like. For example, same-sex marriage was legalized by a decision of the Iowa Supreme Court in 2009. Unlike California, there was no public support to overturn the ruling by constitutional amendment. Iowa has had joint adoption by same-sex couples since 2008. The state has outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity since 2007. (California enacted a state-wide protection against such discrimination in public accommodation in 2005.)

I’ll also observe that categorically rejecting states that have “religious freedom” laws, without digging into the specifics of the laws, would exclude most of the EU as well. Most countries have various exemptions to LGBT discrimination laws for e.g. religious organizations and their affiliates.

> California, by contrast, reacted to an identical court ruling in 2008 by banning same-sex marriage until all such laws were overturned in 2015.

This is a cherry-picked example and a bad-faith argument.

You're trying to portray the CA Prop 8 battle as demonstrating that CA was/is regressive. It does not show that. It's more accurate to say that there was a national debate going on at the time, and the open-ness of the CA initiative process allowed it to play out here for a brief period of time. Prop 8 was immediately challenged and was never implemented.

I don't like arguing with bad-faith actors, so I won't go further than saying you're taking all context away from this to get to a conclusion you want.

> Folks in California might be surprised about what the rest of the country is really like.

I visit the urban midwest frequently, and it's simply not as socially progressive as urban California is. There are progressive pockets! There are progressive and kind people! (And in CA, there are socially regressive places.)

But the support for LGBTQ rights in urban CA goes much, much deeper than it does in Midwest cities. Arguing the point is laughable, ridiculous, and out of touch. Come on, we're talking San Francisco and West Hollywood here!

The point that you started out arguing was based on policy, though. Support in San Francisco and West Hollywood does go much, much deeper than it does in Midwest cities -- and much, much deeper than in most cities in California.

> This is a cherry-picked example and a bad-faith argument.

What’s the trend of claiming arguments are in “bad faith?” It’s like a verbal tic people have developed recently.

I didn’t “cherry pick” anything. The very first step of the author’s analysis was to exclude states that had banned same-sex marriage prior to Obergefell on the theory that federal law could be changed. That exclusion carried through all the subsequent winnowing steps of the author’s analysis, because each step built on the previous step. By the author’s own logic—that she wouldn’t want to live in a state that had banned same-sex marriage prior to Obergefell, because of the potential for changes in federal law—California should have been crossed off the list.

It’s fair to say public opinion in California has changed since 2008, but that’s true all over the country. I’m just applying the author’s own logic. And you’re incorrect: Prop 8 was implemented. A federal district court enjoined Prop. 8, but that order was itself stayed by the 9th circuit. Marriage licenses were not issued from 2009-2013. The Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to the injunction in 2013 on procedural grounds, and marriage licenses resumed. By then the writing was already on the wall with the Supreme Court’s decision in Windsor.

The premise of the article isn’t which urban areas “support” for LGBT rights goes the deepest. It’s looking at states which enacted legislation that might give LGBT people a reason to not want to live there. A large number of states banned same sex marriage in their constitutions between 2000-2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_constitutional_amen.... It’s notable that California was one of those states. Minnesota and Iowa and Indiana didn’t. Neither did West Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc., along with most of the northeast and Maryland and Delaware. These is something to be said for the culture of places that may not be “progressive” but unlike California were tolerant enough to not have jumped on that constitutional amendment bandwagon.

I think you're myopically focused on a certain reading, so as mentioned, won't engage further.

Completely agree. I’d add proximity to nature: Yosemite, Tahoe, Marin, Santa Cruz, etc. If you enjoy the outdoors (biking, surfing, skiing, hiking, etc.) and want to be in a US city, I’ve yet to find anywhere better.

Sure, lots of people are leaving SF but I’d bet that covid is a good thing for the city longterm. Some tech people will return and others will take the place of those that don’t. Why? Because some companies and jobs will still need to be in SF and for all the reasons people came before tech (food, art, etc.).

SF was so over its carrying capacity and skewed toward tech that a reduction in population, a chance for local government to catch up, slightly lower rent, and hopefully a diversifying population might be exactly what the city needs.

I grew up in the Bay and work in tech and personally, a SF that’s a better balance between the city of my childhood and the tech city it has become sounds ideal.

And rent is sky-high, tax is insane, homeless with needles are everywhere, the city is one of the dirtiest in the country, and bleeding-heart citizens have passed propositions increasing crime and tying the hands of police. If there’s one thing I remember about the BART it’s the overwhelming noise and the constant smell of urine. The public transport situation is archaic and pales in comparison to other cities.

You can’t park anything other than a beater in the city or it’ll get broken into, and owning an apartment is a toss of a coin with regards to whether you’ll be forced to smell weed all day or not. For some reason air conditioning isn’t a thing in California either, and I’ve never experienced as many power outages anywhere else in the US as I have here. Owning a nice house here is a pipe dream, so if you want to settle, this area was never in the cards to begin with.

Maybe it’s no surprise that the only reason most of us are here is because of the pay. I miss the quiet idyll of the suburbs, those slow and peaceful days. I miss the clean air, the scent of my lawn in the morning, and having the room to stretch. The feeling of safety. I miss being able to live life at my own languid, relaxed pace.

At least we both seem to agree on one thing - the sooner I can move out of here, the better.

Man, you're sounding just like I did 6 years ago before I left -- and I realize (with sympathy) that it's only become more intense there since that time. You'll be very happy to escape. Good luck!

Just need to save enough for a house. Where did you move to? Did you like it there?

Yeah I don't get it when people say SF is "walkable".

No, Toronto is walkable. It's flat, dense, everything is close by, and clean. I'd be content to walk 45-50 mins to get somewhere.

In SF, I dread having to walk, bike or take public transit anywhere. It's unpleasant, unsafe, smells horrible and there's rampant petty crime. And not just one district, it's like that in most of the areas you need to go to

But it cold in Toronto!

Climate change will fix that!

Not if you're Canadian :)

But clothing

SF is walkable because its tiny, yet each area feels very different because of the elevation changing your scenery in every nook. Ive been walking around the city for the past months now daily, and have not once encountered something unpleasant, unsafe, or smelly.

Now of course I avoid the tenderloin etc. area, but thats how its designed currently. All the homeless are in one place.

Look I love San Francisco, but you might want to take a COVID test if you really think the city doesn't smell.

Funny joke, but doesnt defeat my real experience off not smelling anything. What areas are you talking about?

I had a whole long thing typed out. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt instead, and assume you didn't mean to generalize suburbs and exurbs as racist and homophobic, artless, desolate and uncivilized places.

I live in a quaint little town by the water, a decent drive away from a major city. I'm a tech worker that chose to move, because city perks didn't outweigh the city stress.

I would say that for anyone considering the change, think about what you want out of your everyday life and move wherever gives you that. Do not lock yourself into an expensive city because it has something that you don't see yourself enjoying every day. In my town, I can walk with my daughter to a local beach that has zero tourists. I have a garden, and a detached home office, and a garage wood shop, and two cars (one for hauling family, one for hauling lumber). I live close to my suburban in-laws, who get great joy out of seeing their grandkids on the weekend. Those are things that no major city in the world could give me, reasonably, and are the reasons why I would never move back.

We actually do have high quality produce and food here in North Texas, too.

Pretty much anywhere other than SF can have fresher food. It’s a city, you can’t compete with farm fresh from down the road.

Uhm, there's some of the most diverse produce farmland in the country close to the bay. You get a much wider variety of farm-fresh bproduce there then in much of the rural south, for example (and yes I've lived in both).

Yet you’ll notice they’re not on the top of the list, therefore my statement stands:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/196114/top-10-us-states-...

"Pretty much anywhere other than SF can have fresher food." Says nothing about being limited to the 7 states with more farms than California (to say nothing of the different crops that are grown on these farms: Iowa grows almost entirely corn and grains, so your fresh produce is going to be limited, or you'll be getting things from smaller boutique farms, which you'll find in all states and so produce depends mostly on climate).

> you’ll be getting things from smaller boutique farms

Bingo!!

Wow. But... how do you survive long-term without Blue Bottle and SFMoMA?

People who write stuff like the OP have never actually been to other parts of the country. Good! Let 'em stay in SF.

>Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car.

Not really, not compared to Boston or, particularly, New York.

The rest of that paragraph says: > beyond a select few, similarly expensive places.

Nobody's putting Boston and NYC on the list of cheap places to live, any more than SF.

That said, someone in a different part of this thread brought up Chicago, which seems plausible! Though I haven't been there enough to know if that's true! (Though when I visited, their transit definitely was very good).

I lived in Chicago for five years without a vehicle. It's very doable, the train pretty much goes everywhere.

Everyone brings that up. All the time. As one of the (maybe not elite) tech people who has left the Bay Area, I can tell you that we're well known braggarts. The "SF attitude" actually makes it harder for us to integrate into new communities.

Edit: also, SF isn't _that_ walkable; have you spent time in NYC? SF was a huge letdown to me once I had lived there for a couple of years.

When you can have an entire South Park episode predicated on the notion of smugness in San Francisco, you can be assured the rest of the country is aware of, and partially buys into, that characterization.

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Smug_Alert!

Now, it’s not bragging if it’s true. The problem is...well, it’s a big, wide, wonderful country and world with lots of great places and ways of life to be discovered. Keep an open mind, and try to keep a closed mouth. Reminds me of the buttons that proclaimed “I don’t care how you do it in NYC”.

how is it walkable when the majority of people need to live over 50 miles away because nothing remotely close to SF costs low enough to afford?

CA prides itself on being green and yet, the oppressive housing policies force everyone to commute vast distances resulting in even worse global warming outcomes.

It wasn't until covid came along that we finally even allowed people to start telecommute on a wide scale

Hmm... the Bay Area in my experience is one of the less walkable parts of the United States I’ve visited.

Every big city in the northeast wins or ties on all of those points (Boston has somewhat worse food, but much better art). Of course, they’re not appreciably cheaper (except for Philly, which is an amazing bargain, for now).

I live without a car in SF, partly because I used to do the same in European cities :

- it is amazing to be able to walk / use public transport to go everywhere you need to

- I just don't like driving in cities. It is just a chore monopolizing my attention.

Still this is way harder to pull of here than it is e.g. in Paris. No subway system serving all the city here.

I am using an eskate to pick up the slack. If the market street project was already completed and we did the same for some other key streets, it would be 100% viable but in the city's current state :

- many roads are in a pitiful state. I haven't hurt myself seriously yet but I saw or know of many people who did.

- car drivers are extremely dangerous

100% on acceptance, culture scene and let's add food scene as well.

As a LGBT member in a red state (Florida), the idea that California's protections or perceptions of LGBT people are unique is just absurd. I'm in my early 20's and have never faced any discrimination that would warrant an interaction with the police. Amongst my friends, the police have always been extremely helpful.

The only divide that exists is between cities and rural areas. Virtually every city is going to have a large LGBT population with its own anti-discrimination ordinance and essentially be indistinguishable with SF. From the LGBT rights in Florida wiki:

>In addition, several cities and counties, comprising about 55% of Florida's population, have enacted anti-discrimination ordinances. These include Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, St. Petersburg, and Tallahassee, among others. Conversion therapy is also banned in a number of cities in the state, mainly in the Miami metropolitan area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Florida

There's a difference between mere acceptance (legal and social), and ability to flourish, no? And banning conversion therapy, that seems like a super low bar for LGBT friendliness. I am merely tolerated where I currently live, but when I was in the SFBA I had a whole community, recurring events, and there was much more visiblity to LGBT people than there is where I am now.

Yes, there is a difference between acceptance and ability to flourish. However, I found that ability to flourish is absolutely there and personally don't have that feeling of being simply tolerated. It's certainly possible where you live.

I'm glad you've found that. I'm sure it's possible here too, although with more effort, but with pandemic, and my general introverted nature, it's been very hard to do.

Car-free living is possible in San Francisco and Berkeley. If you do it anywhere else you will suffer.

s/SF/NYC/g

One thing that has changed is federal employment protections. That's huge, opens up a lot of the country to us. Federal housing protections could be possible as well from the precedent set.

I live in NYC and feel the same but a lot of people just don't. They don't want culture or liberalism. In fact, I've seen a marked rise in conservatism and racism in the industry.

It’s also one of the only cities where cops don’t do anything about property crime and homeless people are free to harass you and break into your building and cars without any real repercussions. My neighbor worked for SFPD and we still had to get a restraining order against a homeless person to get them out of our buildings garage. It’s also one of the only cities where kids will have to see drug use like heroin being injected openly on public transportation.

Geographically, San Francisco is amazing. But I’ve never been to any other city that is as expensive as Switzerland and run like a sleazy third world country. I finally moved out after a bullet went through my bathroom wall in Glen Park. Somethings are more important than the geography.

When I was younger the only other place in the country besides NYC I thought I could see myself living in was SF, for all of these same points, but especially having a walkable landscape plus access to nature. I landed in Brooklyn, but always felt affinity for SF and traveled out there a lot from about 2008 onward. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but at one point I realized SF had turned into a place I actually wasn't excited to get to go to anymore.

If sf can transform back to a place where the people that are living there actually are in love with their city and not just there for a work I'd be very happy. It's a beautiful city.

Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). SFBA did nothing special to attract the wealth of technology companies, they effectively got lucky with Shockley/Fairchild/Traitorous 8 and the boom in technology that followed. It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopardize these resources.

This is ridiculous. The Bay Area, specifically Stanford and Berkeley, contributed to the WWII tech research initiative and then afterwards, Terman made Stanford Research Park which led to Silicon Valley.

Without William Shockley moving to the west coast, the "Silicon" part of Silicon Valley would likely be elsewhere in the world.

he played an important role, but all the work by military tech companies and stanford during the war did as well.

As you point out he could've chosen elsewhere to move. Seems likely the aforementioned developments helped him pick where he did.

He chose to move where he did because he was raised there and moved back to take care of his ailing mother.

That's a counterfactual. Yeah, maybe Shockley's project happened elsewhere it Silicon Elsewhere could have happened somewhere else. But it didn't happen elsewhere. But you are assuming that it would have catalyzed elsewhere. For example, it could have catalyzed in Murray Hill, New Jersey after the transistor but it didn't.

Anyways, people are always leaving the Bay Area. If you came here five years ago, first you were new here and second, you've known people who have left.

So Keith Rabois left for Miami. Great for him. The question is whether the next Keith Rabois will spring forth from Miami. Unlikely.

Magic Leap is based in Plantation, part of the Miami metro. So- you're still right.

I believe they will, given the current Keith Rabois as a mentor.

It is interesting how you can gloss over the signifcance of the inventor of the transistor moving to the bay area, and then use the example how his former laboratory in New Jersey failed to commercialize the transistor as an example of how Silicon Valley is uniquely situated to allow innovation to happen.

A much more reasonable interpretation is that Shockley was going succeed no matter where he went, not that Silicon Valley is uniquely situated, especially with the dominance of east coast companies in defense contracting.

When Shockley moved west in 1956, Stanford Research Park was already 3 years old. Its defense roots predate even that. Shockley wasn't moving to a technological wasteland.

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

Ames Research Center dates to 1939.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center

William Shockley graduated from CalTech, and his connections from CalTech, more specifically Arnold Beckman, funded his new venture in silicon transistors.

It's true that Shockley picked Palo Alto because of his mother, but it would be unfair to not also credit Stanford who had an outsized role in helping solidify the Bay Area as the hub for "Silicon Valley".

Many many many companies tried to move the industry away from California since the 50s, and every time, those companies star players ended up relocating to the bay area.

California's free-wheeling culture permeates at all levels, from investors all the way down to the individual contributors. It just wasn't an accident that Silicon Valley happened the way it did.

Okay, so if California's "free-wheeling culture" caused SV to be where it is, what factored into CA's cultural development? Why the lack of free-wheeling culture elsewhere?

While I don't fully agree with the parent, there was a long tradition of "Go west young man" for people who wanted to make their fortunates far from eastern bankers and other conservative industries. Very broad brush, but also not wholly inaccurate.

Are you serious? SF's Castro is the gay capital of the world. Summer of Love. The Emerald triangle. The Hells Angels. I could go on.

But why there? Why not somewhere else?

Only seemingly non-random factor you gave is the Emerald Triangle, which could be the answer.

Ahh, sorry. I think I mis-read your comment. I thought you were questioning the existence of free-wheeling culture in CA.

As to why CA, I don't think there is any one reason. The weather and geography are huge. It was a lightly populated state in the 1950s, so real estate was much cheaper than on the heavily populated east coast (big for both start ups and 'artistic' types). And the gold rush mentality is/was pervasive, which I personally think leads to a government and culture that is generally supportive of start ups and small businesses. While CA has a reputation for being unfriendly to businesses, the taxes and regulations are largely targeting big businesses. So that leaves more room for small start ups to compete.

I mean, just look at California's history. If people were willing to upend their lives since the 1800s to move their families to the other side of the country on vague things like the promise of striking it rich somehow, those people probably had distinct personalities. Every one of California's strongest industries have been because people escaped where they were to go strike it rich (in money or fame).

Wine, Movies, Farming, Banking, Education, Tech.

California is just a state with a long history with a weird mixture of entrepreneurs you won't find elsewhere.

At the same time, a significant portion of the computer industry (HP, which is moving its--well HPE's--HQ to Houston, notwithstanding) was in the East through about the 90s. Boston in the case of the Route 128 companies, etc. But also others like IBM. So a large chunk of the industry was away from California.

The point was the local govts did not contribute to the the rise of Silicon Valley, not that no one in the Bay area was involved

local govts did a few things to enable this. They created a welcoming business environment that allowed for rapid expansion. For example, Stanford Research Park was a joint venture of Stanford, and Palo Alto. I am not sure there is any good writeup on the contribution of local governments to silicon valley.

Do you know how many local govts tried to do similar things and it failed? Local govt is not the essential component here.

If you say so. As an outsider (although I used to work close, in Sacramento, for 5 years), I only can say that I did not hear anything about substantial govt participation, similar to post-war infrastructure projects, or recent push for green energy. But, of course, I will be glad to find out that the Valley is the coproduct of some govt program, not only a lucky star alignment.

I think there's some truth in the synthesis of this dialectic.

Yeah, I thought it was somewhat due to Stanford's handling of IP. The argument I heard was that if you're researching at Stanford and make a productizable discovery you can spin off a company no strings. I was at Cornell when I heard this, where any company built off on-campus research had to sign over 20% of the company up front. Makes those initial pitches to VC that much harder.

it was a lot more. they built an incubator called Stanford Research Park as a joint venture with Palo Alto. It gave access to students (key to any tech company, getting fresh students with new ideas and up to date knowledge), access to VC, and nice facilities for tech startups.

I don't know the exact terms of universities when it comes to founding companies but I don't see how the university can prevent you from founding a company, or demand a percentage.

I don't think that's the case. I've anecdotally heard that Stanford does take some (possibly small) amount of equity. From the first paragraph of Stanford's patent policy[0]:

> All potentially patentable inventions conceived or first reduced to practice in whole or in part by members of the faculty or staff (including student employees) of the University in the course of their University responsibilities or with more than incidental use of University resources, shall be disclosed on a timely basis to the University. Title to such inventions shall be assigned to the University, regardless of the source of funding, if any.

For an example of an institution with the kind of IP policy you're describing, the University of Waterloo in Canada has a policy[1] that by default assigns IP to creators rather than the institution:

> Except as stipulated below, it is University policy that ownership of rights in IP created in the course of teaching and research activities belong to the creator(s).

[0]: https://doresearch.stanford.edu/policies/research-policy-han... [1]: https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guideli...

Yeah this is definitely false. In most cases you own 1/3 at Stanford. But Stanford supports entrepreneurship like nowhere else, in my experience.

That's interesting. Maybe it's the amount of equity that matters so much - it's been years since I heard this and it was an off-hand comment in a talk.

Yeah, the important part about this is "with more than incidental use of University resources," which, for software, is almost nonexistent. (Even internet usage doesn't count as more than "incidental," which I know is a point that many places use to "suggest" they had a part in the creation.)

Otoh, they are extremely supportive of professors and PhDs (and undergrads, though those are often more software) starting companies based on research, and have very good policies regarding this. Most people end up generally happy on all sides.

> The argument I heard was that if you're researching at Stanford and make a productizable discovery you can spin off a company no strings

It's definitely not "no strings" - otherwise Stanford wouldn't be the actual owners of PageRank (which they licensed to Google).

Might be different in upper levels, but this wasn't the case from my experience as an undergrad at Stanford. Wanted to mess around with programming drones for a prototype delivery system (I think in 2015), submitted my proposal for a 2k grant to buy a drone, but I dropped the idea when the committee that manages it said they would make decisions about IP. Maybe my proposal wasn't important enough to warrant an actual negotiation? I suspect that at upper levels of development/research this process is handled differently.

undergraduates aren't employees and have total freedom to do what they want with their intellectual output. However, they can just decide not to give you any money if you make trouble.

No one disputes that those events you cite happened. However, those events were essentially random, not caused by local efforts to stimulate industry. Because of them, the area was blessed/cursed with an excess of productivity that it didn't know how to cause.

Now it's just coasting downhill, unable to maintain the altitude that it once had because it never knew how to (was never possible to?) build that altitude without a big dose of random luck.

Stanford Research Park was a joint venture between Stanford and the city of palo alto. It was highly non-random.

Lots of failed research parks, oil wells, railroads, gold mining operations.

The thing with oil wells, railroads, and gold mining, is that geography/geology matters more than path dependence.

Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and to a lesser extent NYC and London, are more about path dependence. Their dominance in their sectors seem more resulting from, if anything specific to point to, legal factors, than geography or any particular natural resource/phenomenon.

Why make movies and software in California, one in the south and the other a bit more north?

The founding of Hollywood was just as random as the events that "caused" the rise of the Valley. What if Griffith had gone elsewhere? What if Edison hadn't enforced his patents, causing the exodus across the country to make movies out of his purview? Similar climate/environs/affordability elsewhere, why not AZ, NM, TX, GA, FL?

This is a lot different than, say, the reasons for North Carolina to eventually beat New England in textile production, or why the Rust Belt is where it is, or why rail and shipbuilding was big in the Northeast but not so much space and auto manufacturing. It's more like why the appliances that are made in the U.S. are mostly made in the south.

Hollywood is what Hollywood is largely due to its geography. Within a ~4 hour drive of Hollywood its possible to get to an area of california that looks at least passingly (for the purpose of movie making at least) similar to more or less anywhere in the world.

This isn't the map i was looking for, but gives you the basic idea https://brilliantmaps.com/california-filming-map/. The Geographic diversity around Hollywood is absolutely responsible for its initial success.

The climate too. Always sunny (good lighting). Warm, but not too hot.

Cool map. Ecological diversity is evident around LA:

http://www.californiaherps.com/images/vegetationmapjeaster.j...

But what were the first two movies made in Hollywood? Griffith's Western and DeMille's Western. If another genre had been preferred in the 1910s, seems like a movie hub could've landed elsewhere. (Or maybe Westerns were actually made more due to budgetary constraints than preferences.)

https://digg.com/2019/movie-genre-popularity-1910-to-2018-da...

Couldn't've be East Coast because Edison.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drov...

I honestly do not understand the downvotes. These are perfectly valid points, well argued ...

Edit: Was grayed out when first seen.-

They were most certainly caused by local efforts in the 1950s. The reason the Silicon revolution happened in Silicon Valley had everything to do with Cold War radar systems. I suggest watching Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley to get a better historical perspective:

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

the cold war and american science by stuart leslie is a good accounting of the overall history from the early 20th century to the 80s: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_...

The "silicon revolution" happened at Bell Labs, rising out of their need to replace vacuum tubes. Shockley only moved to SV because his mother lived there, and she was sick. And it just so happened that Terman invested heavily in making Stanford into a college with heavy links to industry. It is true that military research was a factor in this process (again, semi-coincidentally...Bell Labs invested heavily in military research because they believed, correctly at first, that this would protect them from being broken up...radar was invented, in its modern form, in the UK and developed heavily by Bell Labs/MIT) but there were other factors. SV's pre-eminence looked at from the 1950s was extremely non-obvious however (Boston was the centre of the VC world, MIT and Bell Labs led in research).

Agree, and a lot of those events were 60-80 years ago. I doubt that the amazing innovation and clever governance that allowed these events to happen (or cultivated them) would be possible today

Lots of places contributed to WWII research initiatives. Why not Chicago, where the first nuclear reactor was built? Or Boston, with MIT whose research labs churned out fire control systems and computers? Or Los Angeles, with its defense powerhouses and UCLA/Cal-Tech? Or Detroit? Or anywhere else in the US with given the wartime mobilization?

Because Shockley moved here. Fairchild was founded here, and the Fairchildren built Silicon Valley and its venture capitalism.

MIT had a similar revolution centered around Route 128.

What about other municipalities/areas who have great universities and contributed to WW2? There are many examples of areas with similar initiatives and prestigious universities but have not reaped the same outsized rewards over the past 60-80 years as SFBA. So I would posit that it is more luck than execution, and thus qualifies as a resource curse

The lack of non compete bans anywhere else in the country is not luck though, and other worker protections that prevent legal liability for stuff you work on outside of work.

Yes, but as he correctly points out, none of those things were done by the local govts.

This lecture by Steve Blank at the Computer History Museum is a great summary of the growth of Silicon Valley

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

Could you make a similar statement in 1970 about Detroit?

"Detroit" moved to the suburbs. Check out the statistics for Oakland county (and possibly macomb county for the blue collar workers).

Toyota, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, VW, and all their parts suppliers(and the supplier parts suppliers) have at minimum a white collar office in south east Michigan.

The event that caused the Exodus from Detroit was the Race Riots. You can Google that because I'm not touching that topic.(and it doesn't help Detroit has a 1% tax)

>"Detroit" moved to the suburbs

Similar thing can happen to SV. People moving to "suburbs" -> other parts of CA.

Most people I know would choose to live in a temperate climate with low humidity if they had the option. Detroit might have been economically useful due to certain modes of travel and location of population at the time, but that may not be relevant anymore.

It's also the strong anti-non-compete of CA that allowed the flourishing and spread of technology and know-how.

don't forget non-competes and moonlighting. As the rest the world has proven there is [comparatively] no innovation and startups without these two. The things like for example Traitorous 8 can never happen.

Wrt. people leaving because of WFH - anecdotally people leave for other place where there are campuses of their companies. That suggests that there is not much trust in WFH. Once WFH subsides many of those people will still continue their comfortable work and life in those places. Those "stale blood" people - the highly paid employees of those large corps - aren't really drivers of innovation (making $0.5M+ at say Google as a programming drone one isn't going to drop it and make a startup - that is one of the points why Google is paying well :), and by leaving SFBA they provide the chance (by for example relieving real estate pressure a bit) for the "new blood" to come in.

For example, Wozniak was moonlighting from his HP job when he worked with Jobs at Atari.

Come on: there’s a beautiful A/B test you can consult: in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Boston’s route 128 was the “Silicon Valley” of its time. The US poured even more money into it than they did the Bay Area. Yet which grew and which stagnated?

I think THE major difference was enforcement of noncompetes (as well as those as a proxy for a slew of similar regulatory differences).

Financial resources went to route 128 because of a more corporate-friendly regulatory climate. Innovation came from Silicon Valley because of a more innovation-friendly regulatory climate.

Guess which won out?

US reached economic supremacy in part due to a weaker IP scheme than Europe, and China is doing likewise right now. Innovation requires a mixture of economic rewards (which doesn't happen in the absence of any enforcement), and building off of the work of others (which doesn't happen with strict IP laws). Massachusetts went off of the deep end of more is better.

Coincidentally, Boston is doing better for big business, like biotech, in part because there, the balance falls in a different place. It's very tough to start a scrappy biotech, so the number of employee leaving to do a competing startup is pretty darned low in either case. The downsides of strong IP are smaller, and the upsides of weak IP are greater.

>Guess which won out?

For a long time, Route 128 did largely win out, semiconductors in SV notwithstanding. The lead in computer-related technology did tend to shift to California with the shift to microcomputers. Although it's not clear that was in any way inevitable. (After all, Compaq was in Texas.)

.... Which was the exact moment computing stopped looking like biotech. Before microcomputers, starting a computer company required an investment of perhaps a million dollars in today's currency, depending on the type of company.

After microcomputers, anyone could do it out of their home.

If my employer is making a CAD tool and makes a dumb decision, I can make my better CAD tool and put them out of business. Even hardware changed when I no longer needed to buy individual transistors. Things like the Apple could be designed out of a garage, with commercial off-the-shelf parts, perhaps borrowing a little bit of money from friends and family, but without even taking out a second mortgage. From there, things spiraled up, with quick-turn $40 PCBs, fabless IC companies, and so on.

It didn't have to happen in Silicon Valley, but it couldn't happen in Boston, and with Stanford and what not, Silicon Valley was as good a place as any.

This is not an antagonistic comment but do you have any sources to share about this? I've lived in both cities and feel like I should know more about this.

First results on DDG:

https://www.confortolaw.com/non-competition-agreements.html

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/understanding-californias-ban...

>Boston is doing better for big business, like biotech

There is also a LOT of biotech in sfbay, but it is still in the shadow of internet tech, for various reasons (PhD is minimum cost of entry, longer development times, etc)

Having worked in both fields (computing and pharmaceuticals) and in both areas (Boston/Cambridge and Silicon Valley -- though never in SF) I can tell you the Bay Area is a shadow of the Boston area in this regard. And the VC dollars send the same message. It honestly surprises me that the JP Morgan healthcare conference is still out here -- I imagine it's due to weather: it's a January conference, and a good excuse to get out of NY/BOS at a nasty time of year.

My point in my GGP post was that the opposite is true, first for tech and more recently for internet commerce, in the Bay Area. And I agree that the #1 driver was a healthy attitude to IP laws (which also drove the film industry to California, first to the Bay Area and then to LA).

And the second was an attitude that people don't care so much about your background and what's been done to date, an attitude I believe to be a legacy of the gold rush.

>I think THE major difference was enforcement of noncompetes (as well as those as a proxy for a slew of similar regulatory differences). <

Exactly

But was that part of brilliant overarching strategy from visionary government leaders to develop and foster the world's tech hub, or an accident of history?

I think the point is that success comes from the accumulation of many factors; the best you can pull from them is a thread of attitude. "Success" is thus really an emergent phenomenon coming from a bunch of independent decisions, sometimes with feedback between them.

This is why efforts to "duplicate Silicon Valley" fail. Also why Europe was unable to move the locus of financial transactions from London even after the Euro. In both cases, there are plenty of things to point to but nobody really knows.

An accident most likely, since the policy dates to the 19th century.

There are so many differences between Boston’s route 128 and SFBA that it makes a pretty awful A/B test.

I’ve lived and worked in both. None of the things I prefer about SF have anything to do with the efforts of local governments.

If anything, I’d agree that the local governments efforts and misguided policies are responsible for most of what I dislike most about living in SF.

So much is handled so incredibly poorly, but everyone’s willing to put up with it for proximity to a giant money-making machine spewing wealth around.

An A/B test requires all other factors to be the same. Can you imagine a bunch of Harvard kids quit school, rent a house in Cambridge and code/party all year round?

I live in 02142 and I'm under the impression that this is already what they do....

I remember reading an article a log time ago, probably in the late '80s or early '90s, in a non-online newspaper or magazine that looked at a dozen or two other places that seemed like they were good candidates for SV-like development but had failed to become such.

My recollection is that the article found that there were several factors that all came out right for SV. The other places fell short on one or more of them.

I don't remember all of the factors they found, but I remember a few.

One was nearby top tier research universities.

Another was ready access to investors willing to invest in new kinds of businesses. This one was a problem in several older places. The investors there just wanted to invest in companies doing old things or in doing things related to the main existing industry of the region.

Tolerance of failure was important. In some places, failure forever taints you. Start a company and it fails? The investment bankers no longer want to talk to you, and you don't get invited anymore to the parties and events where the behind the scenes networking goes on. In SV having a failed startup isn't a big deal.

I think there was an element of hippy culture mixed in there that contributed to success from openness and willingness to experiment on paths not directly connected to profit.

Also, I hardly think the opportunity was squandered - it's paid off for a long run. I do think there are challenges ahead for the model to continue to succeed faster than other areas.

> I think there was an element of hippy culture mixed in there that contributed to success from openness and willingness to experiment on paths not directly connected to profit.

I'd call it counter culture but I otherwise agree with you.

> It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopardize these resources.

Wait, what?

What exactly was local government supposed to do with this, ah gift?

From the perspective of someone who doesn't live in the Bay area, it is a libertarian paradise for the haves, unlivable for the have-nots, and is the pinnacle of American culture, with its focus on individualistic solutions (detached housing, strong zoning laws that protect existing landowners, reliance on personal vehicle ownership, privatization of critical services) to society-scale problems.

Throw in conflicting interests of the residents of the cities that make up the SFBA, and you pretty much get what one would expect.

Before asking why your local government has not fixed <some problem that makes us mildly uncomfortable>, you may want to instead ask 'Why haven't we elected a local government that would fix that problem?' Tech has an outsized amount of political influence on governments and elections in the area. Governments don't exist in a vacuum, completely detached from the desires of their constituents.

> the Bay Area

> libertarian paradise

What a strange notion. San Francisco has some of the most paternalistic laws in the US, courtesy of its board of supervisors. Some of them even wanted to ban corporate cafeterias, an issue which returned last year:

https://sfist.com/2019/07/22/watered-down-version-of-sfs-tec...

To pin the blame for these problems on libertarians, of all people, is the height of absurdity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_the_San_Francisco_...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Nanny-state-or-...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-02-la-fi-ha...

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/economic...

https://reason.org/policy-study/us-metropolitan-area-economi...

> zoning laws

Where did you get the bizarre idea that their zoning laws are in any way “libertarian” or “individualist”?

https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/san-franciscos-regulat...

1. The SFBA does not begin and end with San Francisco. You're free to pick and choose among its many, many neighbouring municipalities, none of which happen to be governed by the San Francisco city council.

2. These are fantastic examples of measures that at worst, mildly inconvenience the most affluent members of its society, and at best are harmless social signaling of issues that don't matter.

It speaks more about your priorities when you point out things like happy meal toy bans, while ignoring the insanity of having an entire city that is completely unaffordable to the people working in that McDonalds, or a healthcare system that completely fails the most regular customers[1] to that McDonalds.

As for zoning laws, they are absolutely libertarian, in the sense that the people who have made it are using them to pull the ladder up behind them. What's the point of owning property, and having wealth and political influence if you then don't spend that influence to protect the value of your property?

Land, in large part, derives its value from how difficult it is to acquire. I could hardly think of a more land-owner friendly system than one with extremely onerous zoning and construction requirements. If you're feeling pressured by this, you are one of the have-nots (whose life in a libertarian-paradise-for-the-haves is not that great - see my original post on what being a have-not gets you in the SFBA.)

[1] I'm referring to, of course, poorer people.

1. Many of the links I shared are about the Bay Area as a whole.

2. Here's the definition of zoning:

> Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones.

Here's the definition of libertarianism:

> Libertarianism is a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association.

In what way is government dictating that you can't build more housing on your property "libertarian"? You're pulling some desperate mental gymnastics.

> As for zoning laws, they are absolutely libertarian, in the sense that the people who have made it are using them to pull the ladder up behind them.

Literal nonsense. That's not what "libertarian" means.

> Literal nonsense. That's not what "libertarian" means.

That is exactly what libertarian means in practice. The ideology, when implemented in a democratic society has no mechanism to combat this kind of regulatory capture. It becomes just a shorthand for "People with money get to keep it, people without get to pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

Autonomy from government is only welcome by actual libertarians when it comes to autonomy from obligations towards government - but reliance on government is sought out when it comes to protection of their wealth by government.

Stop looking at symbolic virtue-signaling gestures, and start looking at what policies actually affect real people's lives, and why those policies are in place. The SFBA is a great place to live if you are self-reliant (wealthy), and can afford its smorgasbord of world-class private services, for anything from education to transportation to healthcare, to legal work, to housing. It very quickly becomes a far-from-great place to live if you have to result to public options for any of those things - because they range from either 'on life support' to 'non-existent'.

>> the Bay Area >> libertarian paradise

> What a strange notion. San Francisco has some of the most paternalistic laws in the US

Not sure if you are aware but the Bay area is much bigger than just San Francisco. San Francisco isn't even the biggest city.

There are very libertarian subcultures of the broader Bay Area, including in San Francisco, but most notably among the wealthy and business owners of Silicon Valley.

Not sure if you’re aware, but many of the links I shared are about the Bay Area as a whole.

> libertarian subcultures

I’m sure there are lots of subcultures. What does this have to do with who is actually governing?

> I’m sure there are lots of subcultures. What does this have to do with who is actually governing?

A whole lot. Look no further than the recent ballot initiative won by Uber and Lyft against classifying drivers as full employees, or similarly failed ballot initiative to remove prop 13 from commercial property taxes. The direction of both results was very much in the libertarian direction.

> A whole lot.

So, since the Bay Area has socialist subcultures [0], and they actually have power [1], will you say it is socialist in governance? Or are you applying a double standard?

> The direction of both results was very much in the libertarian direction.

Those two particular results, sure. What about all the other results and legislation I referenced?

[0] https://dsasf.org

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/11/13/young-democratic-soci...

You may be reacting to the buzzwords rather than the broad strokes. While they do have many nanny-esque laws in the area, you'll find European cities do better on the aspects mentioned.

I’m not sure what this has to do with my comment.

It appears you saw the word libertarian and got caught up in a blue/red debate rather than contemplate what was written.

> got caught up in a blue/red debate

Huh?

> rather than contemplate what was written

That’s exactly what I did?

Do you actually have anything substantive to say?

Perhaps reading the thread again will help.

What about great weather and food

A local government is only as good as its people. It's people squandered it, though forcing egregious zoning regulations that's leading to the exodus. They claimed profits to the point where it damaged their ability to collect further profits.

Isn't SF wildly corrupt? Do the puppet masters bear any responsibility for the outcomes they orchestrate? Or is stewardship an obsolete concept?

Assessing through the lens of strictly zoning laws, I don't think they've done anything wrong. If we (as a society) say zoning is controlled by local governments, and not the state government, then they are free to vote in people that pass (what I view) as draconian zoning policy.

My criticism of zoning is, historically, it has been used to keep certain groups of people out of certain geographic areas.

Yes SF is apparently wildly corrupt. There's an ongoing FBI probe which seems to show that a wide swath of top level city public works employees have been involved in some sort of corruption scandal. The latest revelation is about the former mayor Ed Lee who died last year. Follow the links in the article for all the tentacles in this farce.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Forme...

The ban on non-competes was pretty instrumental to allowing the startup revolution to occur somewhere in California.

I believe that is incorrect.

California has laws that make it safe and easy for employees to go form a startup at the drop of a hat.

In California, regardless of their employee contract, employees own the inventions:

- made in their own time

- made without using the employers equipment or technology

Other states (Texas?) give employers an enormous amount of power over their employees, even giving them rights to the ideas in their heads.

> Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse).

Okay, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you said "reminds [you]", not that it _is_ in fact the Resource curse. However, you must acknowledge that the Resource Curse doesn't describe the SF Bay Area _at all_.

We have the richest real estate in country, some of the highest earning zipcodes in the country, employment rate most of the country would love to have, etc. There's no "curse" here, as defined in the economic sense.

It's notable that a lot of people are moving, but I'd wait until at least early 2022 to make judgements about lasting impacts on SV. WFH might not stick widely, and some firms will pick a hybrid model (i.e. partial WFH) over going fully remote.

Not to mention that few places can match all the benefits of SV, i.e. unenforceable non-competes, fantastic weather and surroundings, an educated and diverse population, cultural activities, very high compensation, etc. I don't think it'll be as easy to displace SV as these articles regularly imply, despite the downsides of living here.

Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving.

For a kind of funny example, there was an episode of the all-in podcast (mostly a podcast of successful VCs) where they talked about SV politics and leaving.

The irony was while they talked about CA politics to an absurd degree ("worst run state in US", etc.) when they asked each other if they were planning on leaving all of them said no.

People complain a lot (and there are good reasons to complain!), but people have been complaining since at least 1993 and it's still an economic hub for startups. I'm skeptical of that leaving.

I have seen coworkers and friends leave, but it's mostly a housing issue. As people turn 30 and want to have a family if you haven't cashed out $5M in some exit event then it sucks to live here. $500k can get you a nice place in CO, $750k for outside Seattle.

I have had older friends leave to have a family. They went to Santa Cruz, Seattle, Denver, DC, and Austin. It's a shame. The ones that stayed either are very rich where a $5M house is not an issue, or they still live with three roommates and rent without kids.

Some other reasons to complain about, but that I don't think are usually deciding factors for people to leave:

- Bad policy (AB5), Extra founder Tax, Hostility towards tech in general.

- Political monoculture (I don't mean not enough trump people, I mean it can be controversial to be an obama era moderate/neoliberal and 'woke' politics is hard to avoid).

- High state taxes that harm capital gains and new money. This is related to housing and prop13. Not only do the people that live in housing they bought decades ago pay almost no property tax compared to new buyers, they then push to restrict new supply while also pushing to increase tax on new money. This comes in the form of higher capital gains tax (there's a bill to raise it to 16.3% this year retroactively, by far the highest in the country). They also push legislation to increase tax on the companies excluding homeowners to fund their services (which indirectly affects the employees again). This kind of thing makes it doubly hard to be able to buy in and live here.

>> Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving.

>> I have had older friends leave to have a family. They went to Santa Cruz, Seattle, Denver, DC, and Austin. It's a shame. The ones that stayed either are very rich where a $5M house is not an issue, or they still live with three roommates and rent without kids.

Just wait until they look for interesting jobs and get 100 linked in messages from CA and like 1 or 2 from DC. (note: I live in VA just outside DC, speaking from experience.)

The main idea is that those jobs are now moving to remote, because of the pandemic?

Exactly.

An anecdote: I got an offer to leave my mid-level FAANG job to return to the Midwest for a VP role at a 200+ person company. The compensation was about 35% of my total comp, and it was maybe one of 3 companies in the area I would consider working for. Not to mention going back to cold winters, McMansions, and chain restaurants.

I don't think people fully appreciate the value of unenforceable non-competes + many companies congregated in one area. No where else in the world does the labor have this level of negotiating power and flexibility. Even if it can be replicated (and I hope it is!), it won't be overnight.

Agreed. I think it was all OK when I was single. But the appetite to re-locate a family every 2-3 years with a job change (or employer disappearing) (changing friends, school districts, continuity) is a tall order in my humble opinion.

There is an old Russian saying about how every time you move it is like a fire happened (because you lose things.)

Well, this entire premise is that remote work would make that more possible (I personally don't believe this though).

That said, the people I know that left aren't planning to find new work (for the most part). CO does have a lot of FAANG options though and Slack was also there.

They're not looking for the most interesting work at that point, they're looking to keep their job and raise a family - it's a tradeoff.

Isn't that a risk to move to a place without as many employment options? Yes. The reason for that risk is you can raise kids in a nice house for $500k rather than in a tiny, old, 2 bedroom apartment for 1.5M.

>> They're not looking for the most interesting work at that point, they're looking to keep their job and raise a family - it's a tradeoff.

>> Isn't that a risk to move to a place without as many employment options? Yes. The reason for that risk is you can raise kids in a nice house for $500k rather than in a tiny, old, 2 bedroom apartment for 1.5M.

You exactly summarized my thought process three years ago. To be fair, i'm very happy here. But it is a mixed bag.

Housing is great compared to the bay area, but $500k is a stretch for DC/Virginia (check it out on zillow) though not impossible, there is a ton of inventory if you are willing to drive out a bit. Unlike FAANG folks out-buying houses from you, you have lobbyists and government/intelligence contractors outbidding houses from you. Def better than Bay area though.

Except i'm in one of like five growth startups in the area and there are rarely any senior positions open, and the senior workforce appears larger than the pool of interesting senior jobs. Its a huge bet on your employer in addition to the already huge bet you're making w/ taking, say, illiquid early stage stock. So your career growth is much slower.

OK, so what if you are OK w/o an interesting job? Then you have plenty of options. Also, plenty of options if you're willing to be a consultant and travel, but now you're making a 2nd tradeoff.

All in, very happy but not a panacea and certainly multiple tradeoffs.

Yep, agreed - sounds like we have a similar take :).

In my specific case my SO grew up in Cupertino and her family is here, so that's another element that makes it hard to leave. I'm currently doing the live with roommates bit, but it's a hard tradeoff to make.

Also I saw where you work in your HN bio - do you partner with VRAD (or maybe are considering starting your own)? I've always though leveraging ML imaging software as part of a nighthawk radiology service would be really interesting. Basically hire radiologists to be part of the company (give them some equity) and leverage their readings to train the model. In a bit of a Tesla style self-driving play where you're providing the current capabilities via humans, but the ultimate goal is leveraging that to train and improve the software. My dad does neurorad so seemed like a natural fit for deep learning image recognition to me. If you're writing the reading software then you can tailor it for training too.

Unrelated to that, if you're looking for more options in DC the company I work for has a major office there (feel free to connect, my email is in my profile).

Why can't you rent a studio or 1-bedroom without roommates? A Bay Area tech salary should more than cover it.

Yeah we definitely can, but larger place with roommates is both twice as nice and a lot cheaper.

Helps to save more to try and buy a place eventually.

I'm the GP commentor, and in my case, theoretically I can, though in my case I have a wife and two children, so it does get tight.

And while I'm grateful for everything I have in life, and I have been given much more than my grandparents abroad...I do wonder -- after struggling through top colleges and a working hard for over two decades with ever increasing responsibility, whether I really "deserve" a 1br or should I aspire to more for my family and me.

I realize it sounds both selfish but also reasonable based on how one looks at things. For now, we've chosen to live very comfortably in DC.

Maybe if those contractors are VP level or DINK; a senior IC working for a Beltway bandit might possibly, with a tailwind, clear 200k total compensation, but that's very much the high end of their pay scale despite the hourly rates they charge the government.

Yep, I recently got a call from a FB recruiter in Austin. One constraint was: are you willing to move to the Bay Area to work at the FB campus after lockdown ends? Why yes, I already live here.

Your experience may be your own; I live just outside of DC as well (though on the MD side) and get bombarded with DC and MD job offers all the time. Perhaps not to the same extent as CA, but saying only 1 or 2 seems like a personal situation.

One more thing for outsiders: Security Clearances are huge here, which really changes outcomes.

@stryan Would love to chat offline if you're open? Really struggling in deciding whether I can continue to live in the region long term, despite being in love with the area and the people.

As someone who lives in the DMV (VA) - what’re the biggest factors influencing whether you can continue to live here long term?

Not being bored or underutilized at work. Excitement about career opportunities. Room to move upwards.

Hard-tech job opportunities w/o having to regress to an entry-level or mid-level role.

Senior level job opportunities, w/o having to join a consulting firm (i mean, if i'm potentially traveling 4/5 days, i'm not really 'living' here anymore...) I've rolled the dice on management consulting before in my life and spent almost no time in my home city. That was great when I was 20 and not so great with a family. I do wonder whether it is different w/ DC and local projects or whether it might be different in a partyly-WFH future!

I'm hopeful Amazon's HQ2 will make a big difference for the DMV tech scene.

There are a ton of companies in Austin, also no state income tax.

You can always move back after you vest and sell.

Yeah, the previous poster seems to be completely missing out that Austin and Seattle are major tech hubs, Denver is a secondary hub, and Santa Cruz is within spitting distance to Silicon Valley. Seattle alone is probably the second most significant tech region in the country after SV and Austin is easily third or fourth.

Yeah, also have coworkers moving there. If my family wasn’t in the Bay I would seriously consider it.

That $5M is hyperbole, right?

Nobody will deny that Bay Area housing is expensive, but even today, $1.5M will get you a decent single family house with a garden in Santa Clara.

That’s a ridiculous amount of money for most, but it’s not in $5M exit territory, and something that’s relatively easy to manage for a 2 tech income family: $1.25M loan is $5600/m mortgage, $1500/m in real estate taxes.

$5M is a little hyperbolic, but $4M is not.

$1.5M will get you a shack - really old maybe a little bigger than 1000sqft in Santa Clara if you can find one at that price at all.

$4M gets you a nice, newer 2900sqft house (comparable to what you'd get in the other regions I mentioned).

$1.5M would have been enough in 2012, but it's gotten worse since then.

I agree with this comment if by 100 you meant 1000

e: oh whoops, it was edited

2900ft houses is a good way to skew the argument in your favor, but it's a bit of a strawman: the vast majority of houses in the Bay Area aren't 2900ft to begin with, yet 2000ft house are plenty, with 4 bedroom, on, say, a 6000ft lot. You can easily find one of those for $2M, and they're not shacks.

This is a $2M house, 2600 sqft, 5BD house on an 11000 sqft lot: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Santa-Clara/2602-Birchtree-Ln-9505....

But going back to my earlier price range. I took me all of 2 minutes, not months of open houses to come up with these:

For $1.6M, you get this 2200 sqft house: https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Jose/1244-Broadleaf-Ln-95128/h.... Or you get this 2500 sqft house: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Santa-Clara/1453-Franklin-St-95050....

I don't know if I'd say plenty.

Redfin filters:

- Santa Clara

- Sqft Min: 2000

- Property Type: House

- Price Max: $2M

Results: 9

If you set a minimum year built to 2000 (so up to 20 years old)

Results: 0

You're right though that there are houses you can find in less desirable areas on the peninsula for around 2 million (and San Jose is cheaper, east bay is cheaper). Usually though there's some tradeoff (bad schools, long commute, house is really old). These tradeoffs don't exist in the other regions where for a a lot less you can live basically anywhere you'd want in a nicer place.

The places I've been looking (Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View) don't really have anything in the price points you're talking about.

I will admit that my general statement about Santa Clara was wrong though (I was thinking mostly about the cities I mentioned as part of Santa Clara county, not the city of Santa Clara).

Yes, I think the people on each side are using "Santa Clara" differently.

As the County of Santa Clara, you can find a nice 2000 sq. ft. home for $1.2M.

South San Jose, people.

Depending on where your office is, you might consider the commute from South San Jose unacceptable.

I have a 2500 sq ft house in a 10 rated school district, 16 miles from SF, that I purchased this year for 1.4mn. Here's another similar example: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Lafayette/3399-Angelo-St-94549/hom...

Wfh will not stick. Managers hate it. If you are really talented you can work anywhere for whatever price you want, however most people are not like that and can only really function meeting often in person.

>"Managers hate it"

Who ever cares what managers think. It is the owners who matter as they're the ones paying bills.

>"however most people are not like that and can only really function meeting often in person"

Well, when your ability to make a living is at stake your ability to function independent of location might suddenly improve.

So if people don't care what managers think why would the owners bother having them? It seems shortsighted to think that management won't have a say, explicitly or implicitly, in guiding these orgs back to an office based workspace.

Managers are nothing but employees. Same as developers and other groups. The owners might consider their opinions along with the opinions of the other groups. There is nothing special about managers. And it is the owners who decide how and what to spend their money on. Not the managers.

>"..won't have a say, explicitly or implicitly..."

Nice try. What are you implying under "implicitely"? If this is what I think it is, the managers are just as replaceable. Often it is actually easier for the owners to replace/get rid of a manager than from good salesperson/developer/etc.

"There is nothing special about managers."

Managers are very often (especially in a bigger organization) is the only channel how information flows to owners.

As a result, managers can paint very different picture of the same situation (as an example, that people working remotely from home are less productive).

May be in some abstract world, "managers are just employees and there is nothing special". In reality they wield a lot of power to sway company in one or another direction.

>"As a result, managers can paint very different picture of the same situation..."

What you describing is a fraud. In a big organization managers are not uniform group, there are multiple levels and factions. They will happily report on each other if the picture is grossly distorted. There are also a lot of metrics and built in controls in big orgs that can and are being used to estimate how particular policy affects the bottom line (profitability).

In reality there are companies whose bottom line did suffer from WFH and there are companies that had actually have profits increased as the result. If you think the latter group will revert because some low level managers feel insecure about their position I have a bridge to sell.

The services and products companies have been delivering during the pandemic were developed largely before the pandemic. Owners can see this. It’s not just low level managers, rather it’s about middle managements perspective in general.

Management and cross organizational relations rely on rapport and relationships amongst baby boomers and Gen X people who greatly prefer in person interaction. Maybe engineers won’t come back to the office, but they sure will be.

> most people are not like that and can only really function meeting often in person

Care to provide evidence for this claim?

I lived in SV for a decade and worked in SF for most of that.

> WFH might not stick widely

If the vast majority of workers demand it, then I don't think employers will have a choice here. Leaving now is a vote with your feet.

> unenforceable non-competes

Very few of my peers have ever cared about this in practice. I don't think this is remotely a major benefit compared to e.g. state taxes.

> fantastic weather and surroundings

The surroundings, I'll give you, but the weather is "fantastic" in a small number of communities only. SF weather is far from fantastic. I don't miss it. Sunnyvale or RWC, on the other hand... But still. The weather is boring.

What I don't miss are the fires and smoke-filled skies, and the drought.

> an educated and diverse population

The "native bay area" population? Or the migrants and immigrants? The vast, vast majority of people I worked with over the years were from elsewhere. We used to joke that it was rare to hear someone was born in the Bay Area. There's not much weighing people from elsewhere down preventing then from leaving, and there is less and less weight each passing month this year.

> cultural activities

I actually cannot think of anything unique to the Bay here...

> very high compensation

True, but I know plenty of people who have moved to Seattle and New York who make just as much. And I know of several fully remote (pre-pandemic) workers who are making 90% of what they would earn in the Bay Area -- I know, this isn't common, but it's possible.

Honestly, SV has done this to themselves. NIMBYism, insane housing, terrible transit, high taxes. I have no doubt SV will recover, but the rest of the world will prosper at the valley's expense.

Employers really don't care what the workers want or think. I can't see employees having the leverage to make much of a dent here.

Employers aren't a monolithic block. Some companies will switch back to in-person, others will continue WFH policies. If more workers depart for the latter, the former will take notice.

I mean, employers respond to labor market pressure just like employees do.

> Very few of my peers have ever cared about this in practice. I don't think this is remotely a major benefit compared to e.g. state taxes.

Well, while working in RTP I saw many suits filed for my coworkers for non-compete clauses.

If you're ~director or above, this matters a lot and the bigco's basically auto file the lawsuit in any jurisdiction where enforceable. At least one exec I reported to had to take a year off as a result of these lawsuits.

IMO it's a huge deal for the HQ execs of many companies, similar to how tax benefits are a huge deal to the rank-and-file.

> At least one exec I reported to had to take a year off as a result of these lawsuits.

Yes, it is a bigger issue on both sides of the table when you get to director+ level. The company often has much more to lose, and the employee often has far fewer potential new homes. These things tend to balance out; I've seen contracts with non-compete timeline matched or exceeded by severance timeline for that reason.

I actually cannot think of anything unique to the Bay here...

https://kofytv.com/dance-party/

> > cultural activities

> I actually cannot think of anything unique to the Bay here...

https://kfjc.org/events/psychotronix

> If the vast majority of workers demand [WFH]

I don't know what percentage of the workforce here has both family and enough personal connections to where leaving the area doesn't make sense, regardless of a WFH policy. It may be that they want a better commute but still want to stay in the area for the aforementioned reasons (I am one of these people).

Workers don't care much about non-competes, but it matters a lot to people starting companies.

> WFH might not stick widely,

The contrary might also be true: For many companies it's currently impossible (due to COVID) to make the big accomodations required for going comlpetely remote, including moving their HQs to other places for reasons having to do with access to capital or taxation.

Calling SV compensation “very high” seems short-sighted these days if you don’t already own a house here (and assuming you want to own your own house).

The compensation just won’t seem so great when you’re paying off millions on a mortgage and wondering if the industry will still employ you once you’ve got a few gray hairs.

> Not to mention that few places can match all the benefits of SV

The counterpoint would be how many billionaires, besides those in the tech industry, choose to put down roots in the Bay Area? Not many at all. (The only real exceptions I can think of are Napa/Sonoma/Marin, not SV/SF proper.) We're talking about a class of people who are truly unconstrained in terms of location, so that should be pretty indicative of where local amenities really shine.

And it's pretty clear that New York, SoCal, and Southern Florida are the truly attractive locales in America. Many people choose to pay Manhattan, Beverly Hills or Palm Beach prices without a compelling economic draw to those areas. Virtually nobody chooses to pay SF prices just for the lifestyle, amenities and culture.

Without the draw of tech employment and investment, there's no way SV/SF can maintain its current level of economic prosperity.

People with means tend to locate in tax havens, not places that have good amenities. Presumably with sufficient resources, you can produce any sort of amenity you'd like.

NYC and LA are taxed just as heavily as the Bay Area.

No; People with means tend to declare a residence in a Tax Haven. Which they use to observe profits. I.e. Registering their personal corp in WY, NV, or MD. Then recognizing all profits for themselves under a Corp/LLC and being taxed at WY, NV, or MD results.

Then they proceed to live wherever they want and buy items using Corp/LLC Funds. When they need to use personal funds or pay income tax - They minimize their tax impact through various methods.

Point being - The people live where they want regardless of tax haven status. They recognize revenue in a Corp/LLC in a tax haven.

For years, Intel had a ~+20% geographic compensation adjustment for people who lived in the bay area. Not sure if it still exists, but if you were smart about it, and worked in San Jose, you could pocket quite a bit of bonus $$$ that you wouldn't have access to if you worked in, say, Chandler, AZ or Folsom, CA Intel sites.

If you changed sites you lost this compensation.

For me, the Bay Area offers a few benefits that are hard to replicate elsewhere.

1. Cultural diversity. I'm an immigrant and having lived in Seattle, Boston, NYC, and Philadelphia, I'd say the Bay Area is hands-down the most welcoming of all of those. It may seem like a small point but my parents and family can walk downtown in traditional clothing and no one even notices. Not true elsewhere.

2. The weather. Initially I thought this was overstated but I've realized after two decades in Boston and Toronto that seeing trees without leaves for six months of the year has an impact of my mental health. Seeing greenery, and enjoying warmth, even in January has a huge positive impact on my health.

3. The optimism. Most people I meet in the Bay Area are optimistic about how a problem can be improved. That's rare and I haven't found that in other cities or countries I've lived in. As an entrepreneur that's a wonderful to be part of.

Detractors of the Bay Area seem to hang out in very specific circles of friends which seem to be rather homogenous. A solution for me was having kids who go to public schools. I end up hanging out with people who are typically not other tech founders.

1+2 for me, then i'd sub 3 with - access to the ocean, mountains (of different geology, from gentle rollers to crags & couloirs), forests, desert all within half a day's drive.

not that your 3 isn't accurate, it would just be my #4 :)

:-) I love the scenery here too. I get a lot of happiness just by seeing mountains and the bay even if I don't hike/swim there that often. Just driving down 280 has such a calming effect in a way that no highway on the east coast ever does for me.

This is what happens when a city neglects basic quality of life issues, and allows petty crime to thrive. It happened to New York in the 1970's and took roughly three decades to recover from. Good luck, San Francisco.

I think many people prefer petty crime to tech elites. With the upward pressure on rents over the last 10 years, even having your bike stolen every few weeks is cheaper than getting evicted and/or having to find a market rate dwelling.

Of course, it's better to have neither exploding costs nor petty crime, but at the end of the day, dealing with petty crime is more affordable.

EDIT: Getting downvoted to oblivion but I'm not wrong.

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/12/21001080/san-francisco-sf-r...

"In 2010, a two-bedroom SF apartment on Craigslist averaged $2,893 (per historic data compiled in 2016 by Eric Fischer), or $3,396 after inflation. At the end of 2019, similar units on the same site sit at a median of $4,300, up 26.6 percent."

It would have taken a lot of petty crime to amount to that $12K per year in inflation-adjusted (i.e. real) increase.

Guy drives past in a lambo vs. screaming person pooping on sidewalk after shooting up. It’s a tough call!

Maybe it is a tough call, because the guy shitting on the sidewalk isn't living in your previous apartment at twice the price.

Rich people don't want to live in your 100 year old apartment with 50 year old finishes. Unfortunately, in San Francisco, they don't have any other choice.

That, I agree with. San Francisco should have built more housing to accommodate the growth. Though if people are leaving already, I can also see why developers might have been reluctant to bet too big on new construction.

Developers were more than willing to bet on new construction, but it's mostly outlawed in the city.

San Francisco's housing stock also suffers because they have made renovation of rental properties illegal.

(Technically, they've only enforced price controls which make made profitable renovation illegal, but it has the same effect.)

> I can also see why developers might have been reluctant to bet too big on new construction

Why would that be?

Because if "tech elites" actually are leaving, then the increase in demand will have been proven to be transient

Surely many developers would have made the bet anyway, at least in 2010-2019, but going forward it'll be worth considering whether building housing for people who are likely to leave en masse is worth the risk.

Rents are still among the highest in the country. There is plenty of demand.

"transient" for 30 years? It takes much less to gather investments, build houses and sell them.

People are building houses in countries where they sell at 20x lower prices.

Unless construction workers in SV are paid 1 million $ / year, the reason for not building is not that it's not (hugely) profitable.

Rents in San Francisco rose faster in the 20 years before 1995 than they did in the 20 years after.

You're not wrong that many people do seem to prefer the petty crime to tech.

But you seem to be condoning that preference, and that preference is ridiculous. An economic boom should not be a bad thing. And tech is not raising rents, it is raising housing demand which could easily be met with a corresponding rise in supply that would limit the price increases, but new housing has been being actively blocked for decades.

You also leave out an important factor, most of the city that is supporting the policies that enable petty crime here have no skin in the game. They live in nice neighborhoods where they've owned their houses for decades making them massively wealthy and don't have to interact with the undesirables. It's easy to look the other way and ignore the downtown problems of homelessness and street crime, and to be so woke that you don't want any crime prosecuted, when it doesn't affect you.

"An economic boom should not be a bad thing"

You're right, but the reality is it has been a bad thing for many people. As long as they're being outmaneuvered by homeowners and landlords, having the boom simply end would work just as well as winning the housing supply fight. Few people are going to miss tech elites if they leave.

Despite the idiotic downvotes you are absolutely right.

A minority of people can afford living in an expensive and safe area.

The majority is forced to choose less expensive, even if less safe, areas.

I don't think New York in the 70s can be explained by its own governance alone, so I object to your characterization of New York in the 70s being the result of its own failings. The state and federal governments basically abandoned the place ("Ford to City: Drop Dead"), and something similar is happening to San Francisco as well. What a loss for the country, as the next Silicon Valley, if there is one, likely won't be in the United States.

Becoming so hated that people want you to fail is arguably "the result of its own failings" regardless of whether the subject is NYC then or SF now.

The urban vs. rural culture war in politics has little to do with inherent value and everything to do with resource allocation in an government system that allocates highly leveraged influence to the individuals on one side.

This isn't about urban vs rural. Thinking SV is such a joke it must be run by clowns is one of the (few, but these kinds of people have more in common than you'd think) things that inner city types and people from the panhandle of any state that has a panhandle have in common.

Comments like this make me wonder if the end of SV meme is some kind of psyops campaign.

It's not. It really is just that disconnected from the everyday realities of the rest of the country.

Silicon Valley has a single major drawback, cost of living, which is downstream of land use and transportation policy that’s virtually identical throughout the country. Basically every large and growing metropolitan area in the nation sees the same relative price trends. Famous low cost alt-SV Austin has seen its Case-Schiller index move within 15% of San Jose. To argue that its governance is especially backwards or selfish and, thus, deserving of failure is to indict the entire nation.

That's a San Francisco issue, the South Bay is doing much better in that regard.

It's not just SF, it's the region and it's inability/refusal to act like a cohesive region. But SF has certainly suffered the most.

5 Bay Area counties coordinated in going into lockdown earlier than the state required. Sometimes we do act like a region.

Yea....except for how many decades have we struggled to build Bart into Menlo Park and south?

I get it. I would settle for a smooth timed transfer between Bart and Caltrain at Millbrae. In some ways, the exceptional cases where we do act more like a coordinated unit make the normal cases more exasperating because we know what is possible.

You bring up the perfect example, because in the current lock down San Mateo county refused to participate in the shelter in place mandate that their 2 neighboring counties opted in to. So, you cannot dine outdoors in Palo Alto, but can walk 1/2 mile north to Menlo Park and dine at a restaurant.

Pretty sure NY had a pretty heinous violent crime streak in the 70s. If memory serves SF was pretty gritty in the 70s/80s as well.

The thing with SF is that the media and a large portion of the US loves to hate it - theres a narrative that keeps getting the replay button. They always will, and it will always die just like Silicon Valley is over and the next Silicon Valley will be in (insert any city, or china). These stories have been around forever, and they will continue forever. Yes SF will go through a down cycle as a result of pressure being taken off of the rental market, and it will fill right back in when people want to live in the city again and the pandemic has passed.

Pretty sure college is going to be in person again (UCB, UCSF, Stanford) as are the National Labs.

The media has overhyped this ... of all sources Business Insider.

I felt the same way about the source. Business Insider is pretty far from a serious news source.

I know a couple of medium sized VC people who are going to start living outside of SF proper (not the Valley), but the people I know who live in the city love being in the city of San Francisco. The people who are leaving the bay area were probably always going to leave some day if they weren't happy there.

And you're dead on about schools and research centers that require in person. Hardware or R&D need a physical space for work and security. And some people do like a cool office experience.

Anyway, tl;dr I agree with you, ha ha.

I agree with your agreement with me :)

Crime or not, NYC seems to be doing pretty well. Top dog in the entire country for the past decades and the foreseeable future.

Depends on the metrics you are ranking by.

They're not looking so hot at the moment. Huge outflow of people and businesses due to the one-two punch of COVID and rising crime + defund the police.

The recent announcement by Goldman Sachs about moving a large chunk of their operations to Miami is not a good sign for NYC.

Hello from Portland (Oh boy, here it comes)

How many times can SV, SF, the Bay Area, California die? How many of these articles will be written? How many 400+ comment meltdown threads about the end of Silicon Valley will we see?

Our economy is cyclical, so is the technology industry, and so is the technology industry within the Bay Area. It seems to me a large cohort of the HN community has reached an age where they'd typically move to suburbs, "back home", or just to cheaper areas to raise a family. This was hastened by COVID, and yet, the next cohort of new grads is right around the corner, just like it is every year. Is the calculus about where to live different? Slightly, now you pick from 10 metros instead of 5. Are people going to be full time remote? Yes. Can they live anywhere? Certainly. Will new grads be better of starting out in an office just like most people here did? Certainly yes.

Can we recognize for a moment that the collective value of the technology sector located along the West Coast is probably north of $10T? If anything, the tech industry is annexing new metros, not moving to them, as tech continues to eat the world.

Same with NY

As a perennial SF-complainer (mostly about housing) who also really likes SF, I'm convinced half the bay area haters have never even lived there, and judge the entire area based on hearsay or a single experience where they took BART from SFO to Civic Center.

It sucks to be locked up in the apartment watching my favorite places die. I grew up with San Francisco in my life, and have lived here myself for 10 years. Just trying to give out some positive energy for this place, but also it deserves all of the negative comments lol. Anyway, I too am moving on, San Francisco (in February), thanks for helping make me who I am today :)

You see the irony right? I'm only mocking the gatekeeping done in SF but they'd say you would have no claim to "watching SF die" if you moved there in the last ten years, because you killed it.

Rents have only dropped to levels seen in the last few years lol, and will just "crater" to 2010 levels once tech and students finish leaving.

“Tech killed SF” is such a tired scapegoat. I also didn’t even work in tech when I first moved here, does that unfairly change your perception of my “killing SF”? Without the tech angle, arguments like this to me are reduced to the weight of “KIDS THESE DAYS DON’T GET IT AND RUIN EVERYTHING THAT I USED TO LIKE”

I don't care I'm mocking the entire sentiment. Every single thing I've ever heard about how "SF used to be" sounds even more unappealing than what it is today.

"Oh wow all the currently nice neighborhoods were sketchy ghettos? How quaint!"

but at least artists could live there!

As soon as you leave SF you will realize how weak and absurd the various generation's arguments about SF are.

Maybe it came across differently but I’m not so emotionally attached to this place that I can’t see past the romance tinted glasses. Any place you spend a good chunk of your life in will have an impact, one of those places was SF for me. I’m not defending anyone, or really standing on a platform of my own even. It was just a nice place to live for a while and it’s also nice to be moving on :)

That’s pragmatic, hope you find greener pastures

I've visited San Francisco a few times. It's reasonably nice but it's also one of the smallest cities, population wise, out of cities with similar impact. It's also chock full of building with 1-2-3 floors.

It's absolutely ridiculous, a city of its magnitude should have 2-3 times its current population and 0 housing issues due to higher density housing.

The newcomers aren't to blame, as an outsider I'd blame the locals...

It’s in part old money lobbying to keep their properties out of the shade. Not even joking, I think it’s really that petty. There is a huge negative NIMBY force in this city

There's some of that, but you gotta wonder why the Outer Sunset isn't coated in luxury condos?

I think it's just that SF is very young, as cities go, and it's been the oddball city, you didn't move here in the past for a good job, you came here because you were weird, or queer, and wanted a place to fit in and be welcomed.

All these normal folks with great jobs moving here is very new, 20-25 years at most.

Oh yeah I don’t meant to put finality behind my statement, it’s just one piece of the puzzle that I have put together during my brief time here. I’ve had fun conversations with people that have lived around here for many decades, including my own grandparents who have lived here for even longer. It’s a city that has changed a lot, and meant many different things to many different people.

You hear fun stories from all kinds of characters hanging around dive bars here :) I had some good years hanging out at Lucky 13 and making tons of friends, but alas they are going out of business (for reals) now too :/

> why the Outer Sunset isn't coated in luxury condos?

Because the Outer Sunset is cold, foggy and windy a lot of the time? Are the luxury condos are still going up in SOMA? It's definitely warmer there.

There are tons and tons of luxury condos, new and those under construction. A lot of the ones I have seen are in rincon hill (aka east cut after salesforce took over), mission bay, and dogpatch. Can’t speak for SoMa as much as I don’t visit it too often anymore

I'd love to hear from people who want to stay in the Bay area what is unique that you cannot find elsewhere in cheaper locales.

I lived in Mountain View for 3 months during 500 startups and the valley proper was the most garden variety suburban existence you could find anywhere.

I lived in SF proper off and on and can attest that it certainly has (had?) fantastic restaurants/shops and a particular type of culture that many people love. However the basic infrastructure and problems with SF are well known and have been documented.

I can't see at this point how the former plusses of SF outweigh the latter negatives and frankly I see no inherent plusses to the Valley.

It seems that people (technologists mostly) literally only value the valley because of technology companies and even more pointedly - because that's where the big VC money lives.

For me (in SF): climate that matches what I want perfectly. The option for snow or beaches on the same day. The food, the diversity, the grittiness, the jobs, the history. And all my family lives here, too. The biggest one of all: walkability, never having to get in my car unless I want to leave the city.

Where did you end up moving that you found a better fit for yourself?

Northern Virginia about an Hour from DC.

The only two things you miss in VA on your list is "grittiness" which is a negative for me, and walkability, which you could get if you go closer to DC.

And the family, which is maybe the biggest draw for many of us.

The more I think about it, the more I realize the choice of where you live is barely rational, if at all. Sure we come up with reason about why we are where we are post hoc, but are those the real reasons?

I can almost guarantee I will never move to DC or Virginia. Not because it isn't an amazing place with everything you can want, but because it's just not me for some reason that's hard to articulate. I would guess you would almost guarantee you'd never move to CA, too.

Yeah I think that nails it - in the sense that we both are right.

SF/Bay Area is "Good enough" for your needs and VA is "Good enough" for mine and it's not some optimized process, moreso an artifact of our relative histories.

Climate is also missing, which is huge. VA has hot humid summers and freezing cold winters. SF spring/fall all year round.

As opposed to SF which has hot humid winters and freezing cold summers /s

Not sure SF's climate can be considered universally better. I think I would get sick of it never actually getting warm.

Same as @AndrewKemendo I re-lo'd to Northern Virginia just outside DC, 3yrs ago in my case. This is my 3rd tour in DC/Va. It has been a fantastic three years, especially w/r/t life, friends, family, society. I bike to work, and every day has been wonderful.

That said -- and I hear pushback on this from other threads -- my job opportunities here for any senior level roles are next to nil. This could be because I do not have a security clearance (a local favorite), or it could be because the job pyramid here in DC/NoVa really is differently shaped than SF/SV, or it could be that i'm an outsider w/o a deep social network, or perhaps I'm not looking at the area correctly.

As an anecdote, I get tons of Linked In messages for opportunities in California. CTO positions, VP positions at venture backed growth startups, all across the board. I get almost no in-bounds from companies in DC except for consulting firms (been there, done that when i was 20-25, not sure if that is a good fit at my current stage in life.)

I'm sure part of it is my profile. I have lots of real-time systems, model, quant, Computer Vision, and tech leadership background. I'm just not sure how much of a market there is for that -- though I'm positive having a security clearance would change things dramatically.

This presents a serious concern for me, and a balancing act for continued happiness in DC/VA.

If I could, I'd leave tomorrow, but, besides tech, there is another unique aspect of Bay Area: the Biotech scene.

My wife works in Biotech and the only other alternative for us would be the Boston area. But, after running some numbers pro/cons, the Bay Area wins.

So we are stuck here ... for now.

Depends - Boston can be cheaper if you don't have a big commute and the public transportation can help. Source: I've lived in both.

Yeah I looked into home prices rent/buy. True that you can find something _cheaper_ but not cheap/good enough to justify the lower salary and less tech opportunities. I came to the conclusion that Boston is just as expensive as SF but with less opportunities.

Philly is supposed to have an _ok_ biotech scene, so I hear.

You can work in biotech in any city on the west coast

My friends who don't want to leave SV are mostly singles and couples without kids who don't mind living in apartments for rest of their lives. They move to a new apartment/condo every 2-3 years and don't care about schools, community, public transport etc. Another set of friends were lucky enough to be able to purchase million and half dollar homes in Fremont/South San Jose/Milpitas/Campbell and now that they have friends and their kids have friends, they are "settled" and don't mind paying ridiculous mortgage for next 20ish years. They do complaint about having to wfh home from their garage since all rooms in their home are occupied with kids at home. My friends in SFBA who claim that there are many jobs opportunities in tech companies have not changed their jobs in ~5 years.

I grew up in the Southeast and went to college there. I've since lived in Palo Alto and SF, and I'm staying in SF for the long haul. There aren't many things that are truly unique to any one city or region, but the reasons why I loved Palo Alto and currently love SF include: 1. the intelligent, interesting, generally well-mannered, and equally laid-back and hardworking people. 2. the weather (heat and humidity are hell to me) - I'm a runner and a cyclist and I love being able to do those things every day of the year in comfort. 3. beautiful nature in my backyard - Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, Mt. Tam, the Berkeley hills, Ocean Beach, day trips to Sonoma, weekend trips to Tahoe, weekend trips to Big Sur, proximity to Yosemite. 4. the walkability of my neighborhood (I live in a nice neighborhood with clean streets and rarely encounter any homelessness - I've still never actually seen a needle anywhere). My favorite sushi restaurant is one block away, 5 craft coffee shops within 3 blocks, Whole Foods within walking distance, multiple restaurants (all of these I have in mind are still open). 5. Biden/Harris flags and bumper stickers everywhere - maybe I enjoy an echo chamber but after spending considerable time in the Southeast, I love being in a solid blue city.

I have a wife and young child and plan to stay long term. Both my wife and I work in tech, and are not fans of remote work. So for both of us this is the best place career-wise. We own a modest house, with a nice yard, so no complaints there. We love the food, nature, weather, and theatre scene. We're in San Mateo, walking distance from downtown, which means we have access to some of the best ramen outside of Japan.

To be perfectly honest, the only thing missing is our friends and family in Canada. It wasn't so bad when we could visit 2-3 times a year, but the pandemic has put a stop to that.

What's your favourite ramen restaurants? My wife is Japanese and she hasn't found anything that rivals Japan yet.

My top picks are Ramen Parlor or Ramen Dojo.

1) SF & Valley: Education levels of the people here. You can get that in a couple other places--DC, NYC, Boston--but not too many others. Relatedly, two easily accessible world class universities are in the Bay Area: Boston beats us here, but we beat NYC and DC.

2) SF & Valley: Diversity. Bay Area cities top the list of largest number of foreign born residents, with only LA and NYC being competitive.

3) SF & Valley: Weather. LA beats us here, but SF trounces NYC, Boston, DC, and Seattle.

4) Just SF: Walkability and street life. SF is more walkable than most cities (the weather helps with that), and although it has shitty public transit options, it's only shitty in comparison to places with actual good public transit, which more or less don't exist in the US.

5) Just SF: Weirdness. Okay, SF has driven out most of the interesting weirdo and artistic crowds and replaced them with CrossFitting Burners. But there are still remnants of that culture, more so than most places except perhaps NYC.

6) SF & Valley: Food. It's mediocre in comparison to the scenes in LA and NYC. But it's still worlds better than the rest of the country.

7) SF: Arts. Similar to food, it's mediocre compared to LA and NYC. But it's still worlds better than the rest of the country.

8) SF & Valley: Nature. West Coast cities are all competitive here, as is Denver/Boulder (though even they lack the beaches), but this is another place where East Coast cities fall short.

In the end, the only plausibly competitive cities on this scoring matrix are LA and NYC. LA sacrifices a lot of the walkability and weirdness of SF. NYC sacrifices the weather, and moving to NYC from SF isn't going to get you of any the much vaunted coupon-cutting decrease in cost of living that everyone in these comments is so pumped about.

Just to be fair, I'll also list disadvantages of SF:

1) Cost of living. "No one is willing to pay that much to live in SF, it's too expensive."

2) Dating scene for men.

3) Travel. Subjective, but East Coast cities are better situated for international travel than the West Coast.

4) Cleanliness. Yep, SF is an unhygienic shithole in many places.

5) Monoculture. Too many tech folks here, not enough diversity in industry.

Agree with all points except "Dating scene for men"

As somebody who has lived on three continents in major metro area's as well as countryside IMO SFBA has the best dating scene.

I am married now, so I have been out of the single pool for a couple years...but before that I will say that SFBA had the most attractive pool of available woman in the world, if intelligence, creativity, independence, being self starters and physical attractiveness is what you value.

I sure found the love of my life here.

I agree that the SFBA has a very attractive pool of women, I just question whether they're available =) I've lived in a similar variety of metro areas as you, in North America, Europe, and Asia. San Francisco ranks dead last. Pretty much any guy can improve his dating outcomes by moving from SF to NYC, no matter what his standards are and what he's looking for, mostly because you can actually get regular dates with the accomplished, independent women there.

I have one friend who lived at a base in Antarctica for awhile, and he favorably compared the dating scene there to what's in SF.

There is likely a lot of factors at play

But personally I had no game with woman in NYC or LA....in part because what each party wanted from a partner was incompatible.

I have lived in both SF and DC and think a few of your points are maybe a bit unfair to the east coast. I found DC's public transit and walkability to be quite a bit better than SF. True, the weather is less perfect, and maybe I am resistant to humidity and mild cold, but I generally found it pleasant to be outside for 9 months of the year. DC absolutely had a lot of diversity, partially due to immigration, but also because the government pulls in people from all countries and all walks of life. It is really the opposite of a monoculture since there is really a bit of everything under the sun there. The Smithsonian is a worldwide magnet for art and culture. You also trade SF's weirdness for one of the most historically interesting places in the country.

On the nature front, there are really a lot of great public lands on the east coast. They are a bit less iconic than what you can find on the west coast, but you can still hike, camp, climb, ski and beach to your heart's content.

I think comparing SF to DC and Boston makes the most sense just due to similar size. LA and NYC are in a class of their own.

I've spent probably a month total in DC, so I don't fully know its charms. And it's certainly a city that I get the appeal of, and I wouldn't be opposed to moving there if circumstances brought me there. But some thoughts:

Walkability: for pros, DC is flatter and cleaner. The Metro is cleaner and more reliable than Muni. For cons, the city itself is a bit more spread out, and its hinterlands (e.g. Tysons or Silver Spring), although accessible via public transit, are much less walkable than San Francisco's hinterlands (e.g. Berkeley or Palo Alto). But the biggest issue is that D.C. is just not really walkable in either the depths of winter or the heights of summer (although evenings can be pretty pleasant, and you can actually enjoy an evening out on a patio). Maybe I'm a wimp with low tolerances, but that's six months of the year gone right there.

Diversity: SF is around 1/3 foreign born, while DC is like 1/6 or 1/8. Almost half of SF speaks a language other than English at home, while DC is more like a quarter. DC is diverse, just not as diverse as SF.

I agree with the rest of what you said.

On the diversity angle, foreign-born is not the only metric. DC proper is about 45% Black which is an important part of its history and identity as a city. DC almost never gets snow so the "depths of winter" is a relative term. I walked and biked 365 days a year and so did most of my co-workers. It was common to not own a car, especially for younger people. In the hotter summer months I adapted by wearing lighter clothes or shoes for my commute and changing at work. I also kept a change of clothes at work in the event of a downpour, which was rare anyway. Everyone else deals with the same thing, so it's not weird to pop into the bathroom to change from shorts to pants on a hot day. Outdoor dining does shut down for a few of the colder months, but then when the first tables go outside again it can be a thrill. I get that the bay area weather is practically perfect every day; maybe I just don't require perfection.

Metro absolutely does not serve many areas. It's a far cry from NYC or European cities, but was totally workable as long as you stuck to the city and certain suburbs.

I live in the Oakland hills. The access to SF via Bart in 30 minutes and the access to completely open space to go running, hiking, biking, etc. is pretty unusual. Look up the EBMUD land east of Oakland for a reference. It's unbelievably large. This connection between nature and city is really unusual.

I'm tied to Stanford (by marriage), so we won't be leaving for decades. If it weren't for the university connection, I would certainly be thinking about different options, even though all of our family is in northern California.

I'm in SF. I think I'll stay for a while longer bc:

- I enjoy not needing a car. Many neighborhoods are walkable.

- I appreciate the mild weather. E.g. I lived in NYC, and though I did not need a car, humid summers and snowy winters made it less pleasant to be outside.

- It's dense but not _too_ dense. NYC felt legitimately claustrophobic sometimes.

- It's still an LGBT mecca. Prior to the pandemic, I could be in queer spaces on a daily basis.

I don't know that I'll be in SF forever. But when I think of moving, I wonder where I would go, and what my life would look like when I get there. I grew up in suburbs and still associate those neighborhoods with isolation. Among US cities, it's hard to meet all of these.

Every city is special in its own way. Very few cities have anything truly irreplaceable, but it's a combination of small differences that make a city special.

My two favorite cities in the US are San Francisco and Philadelphia. Many people hate those places with a passion. To each their own!

Would you mind expanding on what parts you like about Philly and why? I’ve been thinking about moving there but don’t see it mentioned favorably too often.

Sure! Some things that come to mind in no order:

* Food - an incredible an ever-changing restaurant scene, from cheesesteaks to 10-course tasting menus. And all much more affordable than fine dining in most US cities, plus free BYOB is extremely common. * Music / Sports - incredible music scene with major and minor venues of all kinds, and a professional sports team in all 4 major leagues with a passionate fanbase. * Size - neither a very large city (NYC) nor a very small city (Boston). Easy to get around, narrow streets make it very walkable. * Attitude - Philly people are just different. I'd describe it as a "warm hostility" :) but you'll find Philadelphians are very welcoming while also being brutally honest. * Diversity - there is no racial majority in Philly. It's about 40% white, 40% black, and 20% other. * Price - Philly is cheap!

My wife's family is here. If not for that we would be in literally any other part of the country now, enjoying a decent-sized house with a yard.

San Fransisco isn't part of Silicon Valley. You have to drive for, like, an hour to get to SV from here.

SF isn't a nice town. It has nice aspects and places, sure, but it's always been pretty rough here just under the surface. The initial Mission was like a concentration camp for Indians. I just found out that SF State University is built on an Ohlone graveyard. Chinatown was harsh, the population was almost entirely male, except for prostitutes who were often enslaved[1]. There were gangs of bandits living under the piers.

What I'm saying is, folks moving here with their great tech jobs and expectations of picket fences and rose gardens are a little naive. You moved to a freak down and then got freaked out by the freaks.

It's always been a weird place to go to start a software business. E.g. Twitter moving into the center of skid row was bizarre. They're not Mother Teresa?

[1] "The White Devil's Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41181183-the-white-devil...

> SF isn't a nice town

You make this assertion but back it up by remarking on things from the past. The Mission was a bloodbath for Native Americans one or two centuries ago, yes, but how does that support your initial claim that it currently isn't a nice town? Is that supporting claim really affecting the residents of the mission so greatly right now?

I think San Francisco is a nice town. I hated it before the pandemic because I only stuck to the Mission and SoMA. I started taking walks in Russian Hill, North Beach/Telegraph Hill, the Marina, Ocean Beach, etc. Those are awesome neighborhoods with great people and many things to do. Just like any city in the USA, you get out of it what you put into it.

> The Mission ... currently isn't a nice town?

I lived in the Mission District. I can tell you some stories. Gangsters and just crazy shit. It's still pretty wild there despite gentrification.

Sunset used to have something called "Sunset District Incorporated" or something like that. Skinheads basically. Dunno how it is now.

I went to high school in Hunters Point. Doublerock isn't as famous as Compton but it gets respect. East of 3rd street down there is where the enlightened progressives of San Francisco segregate our Black folks.

What I'm saying is we have lots of different sorts of gangs here in SF. You don't get jumped for your Nike's on Muni so much these days, but still.

But that's not all.

Go walk around the Tenderloin for a minute (DO NOT ACTUALLY DO THIS, I am speaking rhetorically. It's physically dangerous. Highest incidence of male-on-male rape in the nation in the Tenderloin.) I lived there briefly and saw some wild things.

I haven't even touched on the folks living in tents and in Golden Gate Park and down by Lake Merced, or the rampant public drug abuse downtown.

> Russian Hill, North Beach/Telegraph Hill, the Marina, Ocean Beach, etc.

Are you trolling? Those are the nice neighborhoods!

Even Detroit has nice neighborhoods.

In contrast I lived in a Canadian city for a little while and I can remember the night I was coming home late and it dawned on me that I was perfectly safe, in a way that I had never felt growing up in San Francisco.

I love this town, but she's a shady lady.

- - - -

And BTW wtf are you doing going for walks and doing "many things" in the middle of a pandemic!? Goddamnit dude.

I grew up in Toronto. I'm aware of the safety disparity but nevertheless I still think this is a nice place. There are also places in Toronto that I wouldn't go to. Anecdotally, I've been beaten up randomly in Toronto but not in San Francisco. Anecdotally again, I've seen people shoot up in Toronto but not in San Francisco.

> Are you trolling? Those are the nice neighborhoods!

Your assertion was that SF is not a nice place. Those neighborhoods are what SF is to many people, including myself. To me, SF is a nice place with bad parts. To you, it seems to be a bad place with nice parts.

> And BTW wtf are you doing going for walks and doing "many things" in the middle of a pandemic!? Goddamnit dude.

I don't know if anyone has told you, but we've been allowed to go on walks. Even in the current lockdown, you are permitted to walk to a park.

But, again, from what my Canadians friends told me, Toronto is practically American in terms of roughness!

Toronto is like the New Orleans of Canada.

> Those neighborhoods are what SF is to many people, including myself.

Yeah, I know for a lot of people SF ends at Twin Peaks, but that's my whole point: folks ignoring the gritty reality of life in SF, living in bubbles, protected by wealth and privilege, and then complaining that the rest of the city can't be their Disneyland too.

> To me, SF is a nice place with bad parts. To you, it seems to be a bad place with nice parts.

Like I said, I love this city. I grew up here, it's my home town. But I also know our history. (And shady stuff goes on up to this very day, just for example check out the FBI corruption probe[1]. Shady.)

> I don't know if anyone has told you, but we've been allowed to go on walks.

Self righteous and snotty? No thanks, I'm all stocked up.

> Even in the current lockdown, you are permitted to walk to a park.

But that's not what you said you were doing. You said "I started taking walks in Russian Hill, North Beach/Telegraph Hill, the Marina, Ocean Beach, etc. Those are awesome neighborhoods with great people and many things to do."

Which sounds like you're touring around and chillaxing at the pub.

I'm out.

Good day sir.

[1] https://sfist.com/2020/07/15/ongoing-fbi-corruption-probe-hi...

It's still difficult to export very unique tangibles and intangibles from Silicon Valley. The intangibles: a high tolerance for risk and a high degree of insatiable curiosity unfettered by local religious and cultural customs found elsewhere. And these both fostered at the universities. Tangibles: Capital as a result of the largest growth of wealth in human history & the only port in the United States to export more items than it imports - I'm referring to the port of Oakland. The light manufacturing sector is wholly responsible for this and is always underestimated. This sector is always the first to try on Silicon Valley innovations despite such innovations being readily available on the Internet. If anything, these souls leaving are merely setting up satellite bases for Silicon Valley's continued hegemony.

Agreed. The tech industry had a very deep and localized impact in the last 30 years, but the conditions that led to the CA boom extend well beyond tech. Broadly, the ports, agriculture, weather, culture of tolerance, universities, natural spaces, etc. all contribute to the "innovation melting pot". If you are going to start a startup, CA provides much more than just VC funding.

Tangentially, lots of folks complain about high CA taxes, but these taxes largely go towards local projects and paying local salaries (unlike Federal taxes). These projects and jobs are direct stimulus to the economy and also provide a large potential customer base to startups. This is likely playing a bigger role in the startup ecosystem than most people realize.

On a more specific and personal anecdote, the green/clean energy sector is heavily based in CA because CA was an early mover in climate change energy policy and regulation. These policies started in the 70's, and the long slow growth of the industry that they enabled may be the primary reason that the US is even remotely in a position to try and tackle climate change (still a long way to go though). It takes a certain cultural and political climate to embrace these types of things, especially when the potential return on investment is on such long timescales.

>threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

There was no inherent "supremacy", just one created by a bunch of companies being together.

Did SV municipalities do anything else to deserve it?

There are better places, with more rental space, more resources, better weather, and so on, plus WFH is here to stay...

“Better weather” I can’t help but laugh. One of five Mediterranean climates worldwide, built on apricot orchards, formerly home to one of the most diverse animal and again ecosystems before the arrival of whites. It’s really hard to beat the weather in Silicon Valley. It’s almost non seasonal, anything grows. The diversity currently of this area is very high, it’s the home of top universities, between the two cross pollination of ideas happens non stop. As a “tech person” who lived in 10 years, and just moved away in March, well, it’s nice to move away, but damn, miss the weather.

Where did you move too of curiosity

San Diego and Los Angeles offer much better weather.

Especially on the coast. 100% agree.

I've had months and months of continuous rain in the Bay, something I never witnessed when living down South. It's cheaper too. Much much much MUCH more diverse. And food's better as is the landscape.

Ya, anytime I'm in the bay area, it seems to frequently be very cold and rainy. It really doesn't get that cold in socal.

... have you been to the Bay Area in the last 8 years? I wish we had even a week of continuous rain.

Only to visit. So, no. I moved away years ago. Couldn't stand the place. Nothing but work work work. And living in between nothing but office parks loses it's allure after a few years.

But I've had my fair share of multi-month El Ninos.

Sure, but So Cal has higher levels of air pollution, and never enduring cold weather is probably not good for your health in the long term.

People used to travel. In the old days. Before Covid.

Never did I say one should move to LA and never ever leave town. One can go skiing (nearby even!) or enjoy any kind of weather elsewhere.

Hard agree. I've told many people that the only thing that's not overrated about the Bay Area is the weather.

The weather is also overrated. SF weather in particular is boring and sucks!

Perhaps you're talking about the east or south bay, but SF proper has awful weather. Moved there from NYC expecting the climate you describe only to find rugged and overcast weather year around. Moved to Los Angeles after a year and can say with 100% conviction that the weather here is categorically better.

I don't mind the SF weather for the most part. (I've never lived there but have spent a lot of time.) But it can definitely have "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" thing go on.

Yeah SF itself has rubbish weather. SoCal is most definitely where the good weather is.

I think California has created this myth that constant sunshine = perfect weather. I personally like things like summer thunderstorms, snowy winters, mild cloudy days, and rain. It's definitely not bad weather, but the lack of variety and endless dry smoggy summer months can get pretty old.

I definitely agree with you. I don’t like the Bay Area’s weather and much prefer that of the Midwest and Northeast where you fully experience all four seasons. I like hot summers and winters full of snow. Even within CA I’d prefer the weather of LA over that of the Bay Area. SF in particular had very depressing and disappointing weather for me — uniformly chilly and overcast most of the time.

The myth is from people that moved to California from other states. I moved from the the midwest to Southern California. I can't see myself going back to harsh winters and extreme summers. My overall well being has increased and the sunny days helpf with consistent mood levels. This is coming from someone who loved the four seasons and claimed they were required. I realized that humans populate most climates in the world and there isn't one size fits all.

Same here. I like the "idea" of four seasons. But after living in socal, I discovered I really only need a few days a year of the cold wintery weather. And then I'm over it. I get that from travel. Not to mention how summers are so much hotter in the Midwest and south.

Mid 70s and sunny is hard to beat. It's like an eternal spring.

Yeah, definitely agree there, my enjoyment of winter lasts all of about a few weeks. There's no perfect climate, and if you do winter sports or something more power to you, but after the beautiful snow, when you have to deal with slush and road salt, I could do with skipping from like, Jan 1 to Apr 1.

There is a place where you can have seasons, yet they are mild. And there is a reasonable cost of living, if you so choose. And it has public transportation, which is not ideal but better that many other US cities. And it has a huge number of software jobs, an educated populace, and culture. Washington, DC

Isn't D.C. really humid? It was built on a swamp, after all.

Yes, that's the one thing you can't minimize or bargain away.

I think that's a personal thing; I found eternal spring pretty boring. It's not objectionable, certainly. It's just kinda meh. Don't get me wrong, you can get far far worse but I'd rather have seasons.

You can very much have four seasons without harsh winters and extreme summers though - you can just have regular winters and lovely summers.

I thought I wanted four seasons when I first moved here, but after a few years I found a short trip to Tahoe quenched my entire desire for winter in a week or less, and I was glad to come back to no snow to shovel. I can't imagine going back to the northeast, and I would melt in the south.

Snowy winters is a nice idea when you can sip a warm drink cozied up inside and play winter sports.

When you have to shovel the drive way twice a day and five minutes later the city snow plow throws half frozen slush on your drive way, you start to crave a warmer climate.

If you're shoveling twice a day, you should consider doing as they do in Alaska and simply stop shoveling it. Drive on the snow if it's snowing so much that you have to shovel twice a day.

What surprised me the most about SV's weather is how it affected my perception of time. Without the slow rhythm of the changing seasons, ten years passed in an uncertain blur. I find it very hard to place memories in any given time.

Maybe that's just an effect of getting older. I just moved away to a place with four seasons again, so we'll see!

I guess that may depend a lot on where you started from. I've lived in Hong Kong and then grew up in Florida, went to school in New England, and then lived in Texas for a while before moving to the Bay Area. The Bay Area weather is insanely good by comparison. The general trends are so stable and predictable. It's nice temperate and dry most of the year. I used to be a pretty avid runner. I went to visit my buddy in Houston and we went running. I had to stop after 3 miles (I normally run 5 to 10 miles in the morning) because it was so hot and humid. It made me really respect people who exercise in areas where the weather isn't so amendable to outdoor activities.

(Updated: I just read all the sibling comments. We are nearly all from other states and have now all become huge weather weaklings from living in CA!)

It's rarely unreasonably cold or unreasonably humid and hot.

And almost everywhere else has large numbers of days where one of the above is true.

Sure, it would be neat if we could have one snowy day a year and a summer thunderstorm or two, too.

It's a not a myth if you're in the SF Bay Area. Other parts of CA are terrible. As you've pointed out it's both smoggy and hot. Coming from FL where there are only two seasons, I call Bay Area's weather "air conditioning" weather. It feels like you're in a really nice climate controlled building, but outside with sun. That said, it's not going to last with climate change. Air quality is already taking a beating with all the forest fires, and it's getting hotter and hotter. Pretty soon, it'll be no different from what people think of today as SoCal weather.

The weather in SF is boring. Seasons are much better. I like cold winter, fall, warm spring and hot summers.

I moved to SoCal from New England, and I miss the weather there so much! I don't hate 70s and sunny, but I genuinely miss thunderstorms, clouds giving way to downpours, the quiet after fresh snowfall, the shock of stepping outside on a winter's day, the glee and madness of watching hail suddenly fall on a spring day.

Comparing that to not being able to work outside because the state is on fire and the air quality has been before recommended levels for a week is not my favorite tradeoff.

To each their own I guess. We'll gladly take the "boring" year-round spring over harsh winter (-30/40 windchill, hazardous winter driving, etc).

"Better"'s subjective - some people prefer extreme seasons (Midwest), 4 distinct seasons (East coast), 50s year-round (Northwest/SF), or sunny/70s most of the year (Miami? LA? Texas? Not a lot of experience personally).

Miami/LA/Texas more like 90's most of the year

At least in Austin and North of there, you start seeing 90s in April but average temperature of 90F+ is Jun-September. https://weatherspark.com/y/8004/Average-Weather-in-Austin-Te... I can't speak for South Texas as I am unfamiliar with the climate beyond some occasional visits.

Sheesh, I would melt - I'm a "4 reasonable seasons" person myself.

Unless you are very inland LA is not 90s most of the year. Heck, it’s not even 80s most of the year. It’s 70s.

Not sure about Texas[0], but LA is definitely way less humid than South Florida. Don't know too many people who actively like humidity at high temps. Some may not mind it. But those who hate it, like myself, just can't stand it.

I generally hate most warm climates because they tend to be humid. LA was very nice. The nicest climate I've experienced so far. Haven't been to Northern California though (I imagine it's roughly the same but cooler, so may like it more).

[0] seems like the problem there is it gets much cooler at night, more intraday variation.

> before the arrival of whites.

Jesus, bro, why'd you throw this in?

> The diversity currently of this area is very high, it’s the home of top universities, between the two cross pollination of ideas happens non stop.

This is sort of the argument that management gives to having people in the office.

People need to be at a physical location together for cross-pollination and idea growth.

Yeah, that one didn't make sense to me either. Lived in Oregon for the last... oh, wow, times flies... 30 years and I'd never consider moving back to the Bay Area. Except, if suddenly there were about 1/2 the people there and housing prices somehow went to reasonable levels. The weather is generally so pleasant there.

> anything grows

I'm a gardener. Wherever I go I grow a garden. When I lived in the South Bay the soil in our backyard was AMAZING. Never seen soil like that anywhere else. You didn't have to do much of anything to grow stuff. It was easy to dig. It was like it was loam all the way down. So yes, the climate plays a big part of that 'anything grows', but so does the soil there which is exceptional.

> It’s almost non seasonal

You've just described why I don't like Silicon Valley weather, though indeed the easy and plentiful agriculture is a nice aspect aside from the scarcity of water which often ends up prioritizing farmers of things like almonds over actual residents. Where I live now, I get to enjoy all four seasons and don't have to consider water as a locally scarce resource.

Map of Köppen climate classification, "hot dry-summer" climates and "cool dry-summer" climates referred to as "Mediterranean"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate

Isn't this very subjective? One person's "hard to beat weather" is another person's hell on earth. I personally hate heat and sun so I want to live somewhere where it is cool and cloudy the majority of the year. That is my idea of hard to beat weather. For other people that probably sounds terrible.

A lot of people mistakenly drive North and don't realize how dreadful Oregon and Washington are. It's 10 times worse than anyone thinks on your actual mood. Reading a number of sunny days per year on city data doesn't do it justice. I recommend people move either to Arizona or tornado alley (if you're not worried about them).

Not municipalities but the state's labor laws are highly conducive to the tech culture and don't exist most places in the country. There's not much money for the startup crop that feeds big tech outside the Bay Area. It's all on Sand Hill Road.

I can only speak for myself but I'll never live in a red state again. Not even Texas, it's not worth it. Even where I grew up (the purple midwest) is too socially conservative for me after living in California.

Unless you are a political junky reading news all day - what practically speaking is so intolerable about living there or your neighbors?

It's hard to describe to people who are both White and American. That's not because they're inherently incapable of understanding. It's just a problem you don't face as much so you don't understand it.

It's like how for most of my life I barely understood the mitigating measures women take in many situations where I don't even notice the situation.

East Asian family in different parts of Texas are California expats and love it.

Yeah, it's not a universal thing¹ but the short version is that one of my friends was told how he was "one of the good guys" and not the kind of immigrant they hate.

And another was in sales in industrial manufacturing and there was a lot of misogyny and low-grade racism there.

They're in WA now so and much happier.

¹ the "isn't happening to me" thing is sort of analogous to "works on my machine". Because of the range of stuff, things usually do "work on my machine".

The immigration issue is more complex than that. I met a guy a long time ago who immigrated illegally, but eventually decided to go legit. He built a fortune in the shipping pallet business, and complained loudly about unfair competition from illegal immigration because those companies could pay sub-living wages and skip out on safety and workers' comp insurance.

It's fine to prefer living in one culture over another, which is exactly what both your friend and the people they complained about are doing.

Certainly. I did not mean to imply a global ordering of places to live. I interpreted the original question "what practically speaking is so intolerable about living there or your neighbors?" as "what ... is so intolerable [for someone who doesn't wish to live there] ...". It is perfectly reasonable that you find it enjoyable to live there and I find it intolerable. I interpreted the question as "why do you find it intolerable" not "why should I find it intolerable" since the latter is harder to answer - I don't know your desire vector and/or moral foundations.

And to be clear, I did not mean illegal immigration. I meant legal immigration.

>It's hard to describe to people who are both White and American

Many immigrants are even more religious and/or convervative than "White and American".

Just of a different culture.

Sure, I'm certain it's hard to explain to other groups as well. "White and American" wasn't meant to be exhaustive.

I'm sure that Midwesterners are super polite to other white people, but it was definitely not my experience there as a minority.

I was born in the US but my ethnicity is visually ambiguous and people assume I'm Mexican, Filipino, or Indian (in that order) based on the type of brown person they grew up with. In CA, no one particularly cares what type of brown person I am. But when I lived in Ohio, I was told that I should "go back home where [I] came from", that I'm one of the good ones and should bring more of my family over, or that I'm "stealing jobs from honest Americans," based on whether the redneck in question thought I was Mexican, Filipino, or Indian. My cousin and his wife, in Indiana, used to experience the same harassment regularly until they started wearing their scrubs everywhere so people would know that they're doctors.

I turned down a very well-paying job in Ohio (and came back to CA) because the people there were so vile.

For me its the stance for Lockdown/restriction - seems to me blue state is more eager to lockdown.

Freedom of movement and assembly is a priceless advantage

I grew up in a small town in the Ozarks and there was a huge amount of fundamentalist Christian propaganda and social conditioning going on in the public school system. The high school principal passed out bibles, prayer was held before many sports practices or events, recruiters/councilors for Christian youth groups sat with the students at the cafeteria at lunch, etc. Some of the science teachers taught science well, though others made it explicit that they were Creationists and were only teaching evolution/Earth science because they had to, and that the students could stick around after class to hear 'what really happened'.

This was on top of another layer of class conflict between the middle class teachers/administration and lower class/trailer park kids, who mostly dropped out at 16 which was fine with the admin. Lots of additional pressure on other students who didn't conform for various race/gender/etc. reasons. And then completely bizarre stuff like, though the official reason for not having a soccer team was that it would detract from the sacrosanct football program, many of the teachers were clear that believed soccer to be a Communist sport (this was in the 90s when the cold war was long over).

Many of the perpetrators here are very nice people and fine neighbors, but if you aren't an evangelical Christian it can be a challenge. Especially if you're not white: the KKK is still a well known presence just down the road in Harrison, AR, so it's not just woke fearmongering.

It's one thing to live in these environments as an adult and be able to blow a lot of it off, but it's another thing completely to have kids there, which really detracts from the 'leave California to raise kids' motivation.

And it would be better at a larger city like St. Louis or Indianapolis but some fraction of the population of those places are from towns like mine and don't find these beliefs and practices to be particularly problematic.

I don't think most places are like this, but moreover, what is the critical difference between the anti-science fundamentalist Christian indoctrination and a anti-science fundamentalist political indoctrination one finds in Silicon Valley? Is it just which one a given individual finds more palatable (subjective) or is one objectively better than the other (and if so, why?)? And in either case, why pick one fringe or the other when there are so many places across the country that are more ideologically diverse and tolerant?

Well right now it's personal safety as another comment mentioned. Long term it's because I don't want my kids to grow up around the same people I did.

Intolerable is an ironic word because my personal choices cut right to the paradox of tolerance.

I grew up in a deeply conservative part of the country. The amount of casual bigotry that permeates even the most mundane social exchanges now shocks me whenever I visit my family. I can't imagine what it's like to be a minority there. Even being a white man who people treat kindly is uncomfortable enough.

With the social changes going on throughout 2020 and beyond, you may want to prepare for SF to go more conservative as the years go on.

Things have a way of flipping during times of significance. California's entertainment industry was formed by a bunch of young, driven people who wanted to escape paying IP royalties to the Edison company. Now, they're doing everything in their legal power to pursue their own IP infringement cases, taking on the form and function of their reason for leaving NY in the first place.

That NIMBY thing has been boiling over for decades now. There will be new stakeholders in that battle attaching themselves to conservative and far-right movements. Get ready!

Is "the [SV] tech culture" the secret sauce (especially noting that the culture has changed a lot in the intervening 10-20 years)? Could tech companies thrive with a different, more ideologically diverse talent pool?

> There was no inherent "supremacy", just one created by a bunch of companies being together.

That is why they have supremacy, though. Agglomeration effects are a big deal. Its why New York has remained a center of trade and finance for centuries, and why Detroit remains a hub for the automotive industry despite the city's bankruptcy.

No matter what brought the companies there in the first place, just "being together" is a huge deal and is hard to replicate elsewhere. We will see if tech will be an exception, but my prior is that proximity is important, even with WFH, and that Silicon Valley will remain the national center of tech companies.

I'd say the jury's still out on WFH. Once more companies put their cost-of-living adjustments in place, I think a lot of employees will change their minds. Additionally, I think many companies won't go "fully remote" - a lot of them will move to a "hybrid" model (e.g. 3 days in-office per week).

I think even if you stipulate for purposes of discussion that a lot of companies in the tech space broadly and elsewhere are going to be more flexible in the future, that still leaves WFH/Remote to cover a lot of territory:

- WFH or in-office 2-3 days per week

- Office every Wednesday

- Team get-together once a month

- Remote in the same/adjacent time zone

- Remote anywhere you want that we can legally hire you (seems unlikely)

- Remote pay-adjusted (or not)

- Whether there is an office or not

In general, I expect the extreme cases will be fairly rare but pretty much every one of the scenarios (as well as whether they're mandatory or optional) will drive different decisions relative to 5-days a week in the office.

Something I realized is that I am not seeing Managers, Directors, and VPs moving.

Could be age / career related - VPs of big companies are usually experienced professionals, so they have strong(er) roots in the Bay Area, with kids in school.

But the number of management moving out is ZERO - at least anecdotally. Once we're allowed to go back to the office and they all go, how long until tech leads and architects also follow? Then "interns and junior employees should be at the office so it's easier to mentor", and then remote becomes something mid-level and seniors-who-plateaued or a CLM position. Which is fine, if you know the tradeoffs...

Such high ranking people whose employment proposition rests on their people skills have the most to lose with any kind of managerial innovation.

I've noticed this as well. If upper management isn't interested in working remote, it's going to be a struggle for ICs to get large companies to embrace it long-term. I see the acceptance of remote work by large companies as something that's going to decay post-COVID until we're back to where we were before.

> There was no inherent "supremacy", just one created by a bunch of companies being together.

I think this somewhat understates the strength of acquired advantages in agglomeration economies. Particularly in an economy of ideas it seems to me that acquired advantages account for most of the benefit; beyond "cheap rent" there's not much "inherent" advantage to be had.

Even in traditional industry many of the advantages are acquired (i.e. not geographic, which is what I think you're getting at with "inherent supremacy"), the textbook example being Lancashire's dominance in textiles in the 19th century (https://voxeu.org/article/agglomeration-explains-lancashire-...).

I think it's a reasonable point to suggest that the exodus from SV could accelerate the development of other startup/tech hubs, and weaken the comparative advantage of SV, but I think you may be understating the current strengths of SV by focusing on "original advantages" like rent and other environmental/geographic attributes.

This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN. People have been leaving in numbers for the 30 years I've been here, always citing traffic & cost of housing as the primary reasons. Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive.

Re-posting my take:

"The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust against various forms of damage to the network. I see Silicon Valley as a similar type of system. It is not difficult to look back 40 years and see how at each inflection point, The Valley's constituent technologies, and the companies they spawned, led the rest of the world and scaled The Valley up.

- In the 1980s, Silicon Valley's Intel lost it's dominance in DRAM production to Japan. The economic impact was dire, and yet

- In the early 1990s, networking and workstations emerged from the likes of SUN and Cisco. They carried through until global competition stole their wind, and it was on to

- The late 90s and the .COM boom. And what a boom it was, Amazon, Google, followed by another death knell for myriad .COM corpses. Promptly engendering

- The 2000s birth of social media. MySpace faltered, then LinkedIn, then Facebook, then Twitter, came up and are still going strong on the foundation of

- 2010s open source platforms. Still mind-blowing: At one point WhatsApp had 40 software engineers and 400,000,000 users. At 3 years old.

I've heard about the exodus from California, usually citing so many thousands or 10s of thousands of people leaving. But looking a the net population changes, Santa Clara County is down 5,000 from 2018-2019. Alameda, San Mateo, San Francisco are all up.

Silicon Valley is a system that regenerates from one generation to the next, and so far, always bigger and more influential than the last."

Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803215

There is a supremacy, but the idea that it is threatened is hyperbolic, designed to get readers.

This is a small shift in the grand scheme.

It might help create new centers. But the gravity is going to be around the universities and infrastructure that is unique to the area.

Shifts like that rarely happen overnight.

Especially not because of something as temporary as a pandemic.

There are great universities outside of sf and even the us. ETH zurich for example. In zurich you also have google, oracle and co. We also have high speed internet for cheap. And are able to fo worldwide business, even in a pandemic. And thats just switzerland.

Not sure if there is any reason for sf once most startups moved sonewhere else.

One of the things that would maybe help Switzerland is to make English an official language (there are already 4 langauges, supporting English wouldn't be that hard). For me dealing with Swiss laws to make a company would make things much harder than for people who speak German well.

You have 4 different official languages to choose from; surely it cannot be that hard to learn one of them for even the most meanly educated tech worker?

I tried to learn Swiss German, but gave up quite fast, it's just not my style. Also even people who came from Germany said that it's hard for them, and Swiss people never really take them in their social circle, that took away all my motivation. I could do everything in English though except the tax returns, it just didn't feel like home to me, so like many others I came away.

Good luck fitting in for you when you get there!

I speak several languages fluently, so no big deal for me, but one of my talents is learning languages easily.

The not fitting in is a way bigger deal in Switzerland. Germans will never be accepted, no matter what. Eastern Europeans aren't even considered people.

Then again as austrian o barely face any issues.

Still, I am sure Zurich wouldn't even come close to the number of opportunities one get in SV.

My LinkedIn account is always flooded by recruiters. That gives engineers leverage to seek new and better opportunities all the time.

Plus networking is also a big one.

Unless you get a job at Google/Oracle and planning on retiring there, SV wins hands down.

The language barrier is also a no go along with cost of living.

New England has a ton of world-class universities and yet nothing even close to Silicon Valley. The gravity you mention, is the people, and once they start leaving that "gravity" goes with them.

In fairness, I think that's partly comes from defining "tech" as the stuff that's done in Silicon Valley. SV doesn't have the pharma and biotech that Cambridge has for example. That said, there was something of a shift westward for VC funding and new company formation post the minicomputer era and a lot of the new tech-related employment in the city proper are outposts of west coast companies. (There was basically not a single tech company in Boston proper after Teradyne moved out until the past 20 years or so. The computer companies were all outside; hence "Route 128" companies.)

New England had something close to (or even superior to) Silicon Valley. Most of the leading minicomputer companies were headquartered in the Boston area, and benefitted from the world-class universities there. But that industry collectively missed disruptive changes from minicomputers to microcomputers, and then the Internet.

The university situation is not particularly unique in SV. What other infrastructure do you mean?

Venture capital, finance, concentration of mentors, proximity to Asia, liberal culture and massive population of California.

Infrastructure might be the wrong word.

I was mainly thinking of soft factors that take time to grow following the exodus. As well as geography and demographics.

I think other than proximity to Asia, Austin has all of this and fewer of the problems. I would not be surprised if there is a significant shif in the coming years.

> Especially not because of something as temporary as a pandemic.

One could argue that diseases were major contributors to the collapse of the Roman Empire - internal problems didn't allow them to keep the external forces at bay.

After 10 years in the Bay Area tech scene I'm sitting here at a co-working space in Poulsbo, WA. Home ownership is still a challenge given how crazy the market is for places that are not in a city but close enough to commute if you wanted to. However, many QoL enhancements including views of the mountains every day, close to the Olympics, generally lower taxes/cost of living. I left the Bay in June and don't see going back any time soon.

Eh, I'd love to leave but I think, as an aging engineer(45) my prospects are better if I stay. Sure, if I was a top technical contributor I'd leave in a second, but I'm not. I need to be close to HQ for now until I receive a strong signal from management indicating otherwise.

I did recently evaluate moving to our Redmond office so that I can better care for my aging mother in my old hometown. Then I saw that houses nearby are even more expensive than the bay area. Nuts. Finding a rental house that can accomodate my mom and family in the south bay will not be easy though.

Slightly unrelated, I'm excited to see if satellite internet will open up even more remote areas of the country to remote developers. It would be nice to setup a coding cabin in the backwoods somewhere far from the city, where I can go part-time to escape the din.

Instead of trying to help the tech boom and the people who created it, SFBA government and locals grew ever more greedy and entitled, looking to fleece techies at every opportunity.

"Why should we build more affordable housing? We'd rather ban development, and make these 'rich young techies' pay through the nose to landlords who just happened to buy a house here 20 years ago!"

"Who cares about ensuring reasonable quality and cost of living in SF? As the local government, we'd rather just figure out a way to tax the crap out of them!"

Enjoy the result.

I don't understand how the bay area could even handle more people. I think you'd have to increase the number of lanes on the 101, 280, 237, 85 by at least 4 more to make it work with the current population.

Higher density housing. You can turn parts of the bay into a modern city, with highrises. That way folks won't have to commute to work.

Or you can massively increase transportation capacity, not just with roads but (more effectively) with trains and subways and other forms of fast, efficient public transportation.

Of course none of this will ever happen, SFBA residents and government will continue to exclusively focus on slaughtering their golden geese until they all gone.

You could build up housing density in the places that people work so they wouldn't have to commute.

Mass transit is what enables population growth, but the numbskulls in the Bay Area decided to have a dozen different transit agencies who all fight like mortal enemies when it comes to even simple things like coordination of schedules. Not to mention the complete incompetence in just improving existing infrastructure like Caltrain and various light rail systems.

At the end of the day you cannot underestimate the value of being surrounded by high caliber people and how it will impact you. People will always have to pay a premium for that. Which is why cities like SF and NYC will always have a draw for young and ambitious people who don't mind living in rat holes.

The major obstacle to living in SV is the insane cost of homeownership that puts the (pretty commonplace) aspiration of living in one's own home with a nice yard out of reach of all but the richest (even being in the top 5% of incomes in the nation is no guarantee of being able to own a house in Palo Alto, for example.) With the recent passing of Prop 19, things get even worse: people who are looking to inherit homes from their parents are in for a shock if they have siblings --- they may be forced to pay a much higher property tax if they do not all live in the property! Prop 19 is written to benefit Realtors and Firefighters: realtors get to pry houses out of seniors' hands to sell, and firefighters get to increase their salaries and ranks. Prop 19 will also massively reduce incentives to rent (or alternately, bump up rents to much higher levels to cover the much higher property taxes), leaving housing the same or much worse off (my bet is on the latter.)

Add to this the ridiculously high income tax burden and sales tax burden, and it becomes clear that raising children is also out of reach for most (particularly if you do not want to send your children to the piss-poor public schools in many areas.)

For singles also, particularly men (who comprise the majority of techies), things are pretty bleak: there is too much competition for women, and opportunities to date do not come by easily at all.

If homeownership and family formation are supremely hard, and so is finding a mate, what exactly is the rationale for continuing to live in the Bay Area? It seems to me that the Bay Area will become an in-and-out type of place (like Manhattan or some of the other New York boroughs perhaps), wherein you bust your ass for several years and decamp to a lower-tax (or better still, no-tax) jurisdiction to get on with the next phase of your life.

> poor public schools in many areas

What exactly makes them so bad?

I don't know exactly, but my experience is that most parents say private schools do a better job (teachers are better engaged and aren't checked out, apathetic pencil pushers). In the areas with good school districts (and there are a handful of those), things swing to another extreme: too much pressure, like Singapore-style schools, which causes children to buckle under the pressure later in their lives.

> but my experience is that most parents say private schools do a better job

This sounds more like classism to me.

This reads like a knee-jerk reaction to me.

There are data and experiences available for making these judgments. There might be a class divide underlying it, but to walk away with the assessment that one type of school on average does better than another is not a classist sentiment.

I always went to schools that are considered "bad" (including community college and undergrad!), so I'm genuinely curious as to what goes into these judgements.

It is not. Remember that public schools (they are essentially free for the parents) are competing with private schools that are charging 20k+ per year per pupil. Most people who have to work for a living will not shell out 20k+ or (50-60k if there are siblings involved) simply because they are classist: they see clear advantages in private schools.

This year, most bay area public schools are online. Many private schools are still operating in person. For young children, this makes a world of difference. Just one instance of where private schools come out on top.

> Most people who have to work for a living will not shell out 20k+ or (50-60k if there are siblings involved) simply because they are classist: they see clear advantages in private schools.

Just because they see it doesn't mean it's actually there. Private schools attract the students that would do better in any environment (because of both socioeconomic class factors and involved parents making non-default choices), and measures of student performance reflect this. There's very little evidence that they do anything to actually improve outcomes, but what most people see (aside from marketing, which private schools put plenty of money into as well) is statistics that show correlation without controlling for other variables, from which it is easy to make incorrect inferences about causation.

> Most people who have to work for a living will not shell out 20k+ or (50-60k if there are siblings involved) simply because they are classist: they see clear advantages in private schools.

Im not sure why that would rule out classism.

It's not that the schools are shit. They all have issues. Some get much better funding than others - clearly, but they're all leagues better than what you'd get in many rural parts of America.

The issue is that the kids going to the "poor" schools are poor. Their home life is shit because they're frequently sharing a two bedroom apartment with another family. They're dealing with parents who are unable to afford a better housing situation (not just renting a house - but they can't even afford to rent a place without another family being in it - lots of multigenerational housing happening too, which has pro/con) and who frequently have to work much more than some dual income FAANG tech couple - and they have a much worse quality of life. The parents aren't very involved because they just have other priorities.

This leads to the kids randomly dropping out middle of the year. Every year, the kids I know who went to Santa Clara schools ended up with their class sizes shrinking throughout the year because kids would just disappear middle of the year. That has the pros of less kids per classroom as the schoolyear goes on but it has downsides like... well, you can't make any long term friendships! On top of that, if you are in a family that is doing well - you're gonna be unrelatable to the other kids. And it goes true with the parents too.

One of the reasons my friends have put their kids in private schools is because their kids are around people like themselves, the parents operate under a collective agreement (they are all too involved in their parenting style), and there's just a commonality in background. At the public school, kids of all backgrounds could be interfacing and it just didn't give much social cohesion. Everyone had different goals. Some kids/parents wanted to just get to the next grade along with some babysitting - others wanted much more. Public school mostly is for handling the first people.

> Their home life is shit because they're frequently sharing a two bedroom apartment with another family

This sounds like a spoiled rich person talk: it's unimaginable how people manage to survive without a separate bedroom. And a private gardener, one should add.

A mere hundred years ago having a room per family was considered to be okay.

In USSR two generations living in the same one-bedroom apartment was a usual thing.

Somehow people managed to finish schools, go to universities and just do whatever normal people do.

Once you have a roof above your head, your living conditions are not shit pretty much by definition. We all got a bit too spoiled.

Ah, yes, ye old argument: "BACK IN MY DAY"

Ye olde, but goode.

It's less of an argument and more of a question: what has changed so that a separate bedroom and PS5 are now deemed basic necessities?

There is a positive (in the control systems sense) feedback loop with school quality. Whenever test scores drop a little, the most affluent and engaged parents tend to panic. They transfer their children to private school, or move to higher rated school districts. The public school they left behind then suffers further declines in test scores and funding, and the downward spiral continues.

> there is too much competition for women, and opportunities to date do not come by easily at all.

I can't agree more. Spent 5 years in SF single. I went down to Colombia to explore a different culture. I was unsingle in less than a month.

The average "unlovable tech bro" in SF is considered a catch almost anywhere else.

I'm a fan of fair career opportunities for women even if it means I have to work harder to find a date/mate.

my post has nothing to do with career opportunities for women.

To be fair, you'll have a much better time down there if you maintain the fantasy that you were a charming model all along and that American women are cold prudes. Wealthy geeks finding fulfillment of their "so rich that models have to fuck me" dream in the third world is a bit of a trope.

All I can say is.. YIKES

Please see a therapist. whatever is going on in your headspace cannot be healthy

I'm not the one who needs to travel to Colombia to get a date.

well, at least not only do I get to date these beautiful women, I also don't have to talk to people like you outside of internet forums :)

That said, all the best and I hope you find some way to manage your anger. Life is way too short to live like a pressure cooker

The cost of homeownership is a huge factor for me.

When I started working in 2014, I figured I would need to save around $150k for a down payment because the median home price in Santa Clara county was around $800k. Now the median price is around $1.4M [1], so I'd need around $250k.

The growth in home prices has roughly matched my ability to save for a home, so almost seven years later I'm not any closer than I was in 2014.

I feel like my options are (A) live in an apartment forever, (B) hellish commute, or (C) leave. With starting a family on the horizon, Option C looks better every day.

[1] https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/santa-clara-home-...

Hah, I was in your exact same situation a couple of years ago and when my kid was born, I decided to leave Santa Clara for good. I have not regretted the decision yet. Not only was I able to afford a decent home, I am happy that I wont have to pay an insane mortgage for rest of my life. What I definitely miss about SFBA is the weather and diversity of good food.

Not only that, but also consider the fact that you are paying 1.4M for a house that was likely built in the 60s, is not up to date at all, and has a perpetual tax liability of at least 15-18k per year (further raises in taxes are much more likely than not). The mortgage would also not be sustainable if one earner lost their job (or if the high-earner lost theirs), and remember that this high mortgage payment needs to be paid every month for 360 months. All of these are solid arguments against buying even if you did have the down payment.

Yes, exactly. A $1M mortgage is about $5k/month. Paying that means sacrificing other uses of money like retirement, child's college savings, vacations, etc.

And, as you pointed out, we would be in deep trouble if our income took a hit, or if housing prices tumble. If you buy into the high housing costs, you really need them to continue. It's a bad cycle.

It's even worse in SF right now, where public schools are closed and private schools are open.

For Proposition 19, if the house is in a trust that the beneficiaries can “share and share alike”, then the trustee can give the house to one sibling (the one who will live in the property) and give cash to the other siblings to avoid reassessment.

Or you can transfer the property before February 16, 2021; see https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2020-11-proposition-19-paren...

Thank you for that excellent resource! Much food for thought.

SF could've been a modern metropolis if the state and local government had effectively taken advantage of their tech boom.

Instead, the NIMBYs and their passionate hatred for any change or growth led to a bottleneck in progress. New housing construction has been anemic at best, and Prop 13 has starved local budgets (especially schools).

So they took the economic/innovation powerhouse of tech and squandered it with absurd housing costs and an inability to pay civil servants adequately.

To all the SF locals who regularly pushed for these things, you reap what you sow, and all the damage to SF is on you.

Having read this headline ad infinium over the last 20 years or so, I will believe this when the majority of VCs move out of, and not "keep a place" in, the Bay Area.

Other places have and will continue to develop, and that's great! But the center of gravity is going to remain where you can get face time with investors.

Keen observers will notice a dozen or more US-based tech hubs emerging in those 20 years. Twenty years ago, where else would you go for a promising/lucrative tech career? Today, you can pick a state!

Completely true! But the center of gravity remains unmoved. For context: I've never lived in the bay area; if anything, I'd benefit from there being more dissipation.

Silicon Valley is Over is the new The Suit is Back.

"I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead." —Founder of Altavista, 1993

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/bvE0Ka5...

(Link doesn't work on mobile)

Everything old really is new again.

The cost of housing and office space has spiraled out of control, thanks to the environmentalists and Prop 13.

The tech industry has beaten the Bay Area to within inches of its life. The pandemic may have saved it. Political mismanagement probably deserves most of the blame, because how else do you explain a historically significant economic boom reducing the quality of life for a highly developed region? I tried for many years to view the tech boom optimistically, but I as wrong.

You said it youself: political mismanagement. Make it illegal to build apartment buildings, make it impossible to build good public transit. Ban plastic straws. Refuse to prosecute criminals. Close the safe outdoor parks. Force public servants to pay into a bloated pension system. That's how you reduce the quality of life.

Lol ban plastic straws.

Yes, if only we had our plastic straws, then all the problems in the area would magically disappear.

That's exactly my point :) It's not that plastic straws are significantly good or bad - they're a distraction from the real issues. And the fact that it gets any airtime at all is absolutely ridiculous. Certainly distracted you from discussing housing, infrastructure, or crime in your response.

I can agree with that. Plastic straws suck, and banning them is good for oceans, but small stuff like this is focused on. Just ban them/add a surcharge, like plastic bags, and move on to bigger things.

I don't know if you guys realize it or not but there's a new cottage industry around artisan flavored paper straws. People soon realized paper disturbs the flavor profile of beverages and took that as an opportunity to shape and craft the profiles to their liking given the inevitable. There's all kinds of sustainably grown hemp and bamboo paper straws that add some real interesting notes and aftertastes to a beverage that can actually be paired to illuminate and compliment the natural flavors of the many things we enjoy drinking. There's a new art in it, it's the proverbial lemons to lemonade moment and people are capitalizing on it as long as the once beloved plastic straws remain regulated out of the picture. This is actually how progress happens if you think about it.

You're blaming the tech industry for the faults of NIMBYism.

>because how else do you explain a historically significant economic boom reducing the quality of life for a highly developed region

The new world wealth basically funded a(nother) couple hundred years of war in Europe.

There's a big blurry zone between incompetence and ideological motivation when it comes to bad policy and squandering resources. If you and everyone around you have a moral compass the points toward invading Britain is it really incompetence to try and pull it off? If you and everyone around you have a moral compass that points towards banning apartment buildings and legalizing petty theft then is it really incompetence to try and pull it off? When you're competently trying to do stupid things it's not incompetence, it's just plain old bad values.

I don’t see much discussion of the unmovable reality of timezones. Sure, any tech worker can work remotely for any employer... In theory. In practice, timezone distance is becoming the new relevant measure of distance.

The further you are (in TZ distance) from an organization’s management, the less opportunities are available to you in that organization, because the degraded communication will make it impossible for you to fully participate in the decision-making process.

So I think that the most skilled tech workers over time will gravitate to areas which combine 1) high quality of living and 2) minimal timezone distance from management.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I work at one of FANG and recently relocated to Asheville from the Bay Area (sooner than I expected; we have a newborn and wildfire smoke was getting pretty bad). Compensation adjustment is surprisingly less than I would have expected, although it's hard to say if this trend will hold over the next decade or not.

Our rent is 1/4 of what it was in the Bay Area for one more bedroom now. I do miss California a lot though; the weather, food, and culture are very hard to beat (although Asheville isn't too bad in this regard, but at perhaps 1/20 of the scale). Ironically, with the amount that I am able to save from not living there anymore, I plan to save up and buy a house somewhere in the Bay Area in 15-20 years. But this is assuming my income will remain at Silicon Valley levels. If companies change their mind about embracing remote work, it will drop quite a bit since we are definitely not moving back any time soon. Personally, I feel that I am more productive working remotely than in person, but I do miss all of the office perks.

> wildfire smoke was getting pretty bad

For reference, can you give some numbers on this situation, such as average/high daily PM25? I've heard multiple people refer to the smoke as bad, but I'm wondering what it means exactly.

This site offers visualizations of air quality over time: https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/air-data-multiy...

I think people in this thread have expressed well that the concern is when you want to change jobs. It's just a lot easier to do when you're in the area.

It blows my mind that SF chose to demonize its most productive citizens, both from a policy perspective (higher taxes), and a cultural perspective (the "god hates techies" messages painted on the sidewalks or the bricks thrown at Google buses). Any other city in the world would be thrilled to welcome the kind of tech talent that used to congregate in SF. And now they will.

There's more to life, society and culture than the mere generation of dollars for your (company's) owners and local government.

Western Europe is about to finally see a substantial tech boom. It won't be due to any of the rather laughable government programs being attempted there routinely, rather, it's going to be caused by a large influx of US venture capital that has begun and will get a lot larger across this decade. That venture capital will reshape European tech dramatically, altering how they do tech start-ups and producing the first new tech giants there. European governments however will take most of the credit for the boom, because all of their efforts have failed across decades now and they're desperate. The primary things lacking in Europe have been enough risk capital and the shaping (how it's done, how you rapidly scale tech giants globally), the US VCs will bring that capital and the understanding of how to build giants (which Europe entirely lacks); they have all the talent necessary. Also, tech salaries in Europe will increase dramatically as they begin building some giants that poach at ever higher salaries.

Do you mind if I ask you few questions via email?

I’ve told my wife and others this for a while, but my prediction is that we’re going to see two big changes in a post COVID world:

1) Many companies will realize that they can not only survive, but thrive with employees working from home.

2) Satellite internet will open up rural areas to be a viable place for people to live and WFH.

I speculate (and already see evidence) that there will be a shift for many office workers in congested cities to move to rural areas, for a simpler life, where it was not possible before due to both points above.

If this becomes true, I’m curious to see what becomes of both real estate scarcity and prices for large lots of land in rural areas, and the impacts of the economy in these originally less viable areas for people to live and work, as they’re currently only inhabited by people that can earn a living from things like farming.

I could be totally off, but this seems at least possible.

Weather aside, I really enjoyed living in Amsterdam. It is a crowded and rather small city, but it is a big center for banking and tech. Europe doesn’t really do the sprawling mega cities like the US does, though everything is very well connected. Still though, that headline is a bit overblown.

Amsterdam is a pretty expensive city(for Europe, I know it's cheap compared to Sf but so is everything else out there). Wow are the median tech salaries there?

I suppose the salaries are somewhat comparable if perhaps a little lower, however the cost of living is much less in general compared to SF. The most important thing is that the beer is inexpensive, and the fact that you can spend every weekend in a different city for next to nothing more than makes up for the discrepancy.

I wasn't comparing Amsterdam to SF since nothin in Europe comes close to Bay Area, I was saying Amsterdam is expensive compared to most cities in Europe but when I look t wages I don't see anything special than cities in Europe with a lower CoL.

The walkability of older European cities cannot be overstated as a huge quality-of-life improvement! Bikability too, which is a big feature of many European cities.

The language issue is real, though. It's probably better, I think, to accept that you can't speak the language, and to give yourself a break learning it. If you like it, and want to learn, and want to be able to deal with banks and mobile providers over the phone (extremely difficult without fluency, and computer translation tools won't help you!), then take a class, and take it slowly.

It's stressful enough to move overseas. My advice is not to add language on top of everything else you have to learn - you are lucky to speak English, so lean into that. (Many people will appreciate practicing their English with a native speaker, too - although some small minority will hate you for it.)

But yeah, don't do what I did and try to do everything at once. It's stressful, exhausting, and you never give yourself a chance to recover, mentally or emotionally, from the stress of learning. Be kind to yourself!

The money isn't as good, but the benefits are quite a lot better, especially for families. Universal healthcare is an enormous simplification of life (I really wish Americans who get mad about "socialized medicine = evil!" could experience it first hand; its clear there is no such thing as a free market in healthcare anyway). Universal education, even pre-K, is an enormous benefit if you have kids.

But yeah, total comp for devs seem to top out at around 100k, no matter where you are, and usually is more like 50k. (Evidence is anecdotal). Also, since the epicenter of the internet is still the SFBA they wonder why you are in Europe, when all of them want to move to the SFBA! I suspect this last one will start changing.

Dutch people generally have pretty much perfect english. Scandinavia too. Urban Germany too. I think the only resistance to speaking english would be from the French. That said, it's only polite to try to learn and speak the local language.

I think this has been happening for a while now. Even if the pace might be accelerated, until we get alternate cities that develop a startup ecosystem, you will simply never have the level of innovation that comes out of SF (and to a lesser extent NYC).

SV has remained a key center of technology because it's easier to find elite and specialized talent there. Telework has yet to prove as collaboration-friendly as face-to-face and water-cooler talk. I'm not sure cost of living alone can counter that advantage. Any other city that "collects" enough techies to do the same will start to have cost of living problems of its own.

Plus, SV is used to "foreigners" and oddballs. Many other cities are not. As soon as you leave downtown, tradition-based evangelical influences take over. Rural areas are going to be that way no matter where you are in the US, but the intensity is generally more gradual in CA.

One reason to stay in SV: Big tech total compensation is higher here than anywhere else in the world. That's why I'd continue to stay in SV rather than moving.

How many companies recant on the benefits of remote work and return to offices, how much "geo-pay" gets accepted as "well this is how remote work is now", and probably people burning out of working out of their home office are things to watch in the next few years. People might actually want to go back to places like SV when they get bored making 2/3 less in some quiet burg in Indiana.

As a bay area native (since 1980) thought I would add my reasons for moving and my thought process. These are my observations and opinions only. YMMV

I recently sold my house and moved to Las Vegas. It was largely for quality of life and failed gov't policies which seem like they are only going to continue.

I moved from a 1800sqft family home to a 5000sqft fully furnished mansion for the same price. It's actually cheaper when you consider not having state income tax and having roommates brings the cost down even more. Granted I'm currently renting but plan on buying again within the next few years if I decide I like it here.

Once COVID-19 happened it seemed like remote work was going to become the new norm, even after the pandemic passes. I'm predicting downward home price pressure in the SF bay area and a slight increase in other metro areas where tech workers are migrating to (slightly in Vegas but much more so in Austin). I wanted to sell my home before that happened. I also think the suburbs further away from SF but commutable once or twice a week won't be hit as hard as people in SF will get homes still in the bay area but further out.

Within the last year I was seeing a rise of homelessness in my neighborhood. Been woken up in the middle of the night a few times from people yelling and fighting. That never was an issue 2-3 years ago. Local stores had been closing more and more with many prime locations remaining vacant for years. I'm predicting COVID/gov't lockdowns and the homeless situation will only accelerate that.

Politically the bay area is definitely an echo chamber. In Vegas, I have friends who are both extreme left and extreme right and we all get along fine. In the bay area it felt like everyone was far left and anyone moderate or to the right remained silent for fear of being attacked or retaliated against. "Tolerance" and "diversity" seemed like they were in name only, at least when it comes to politics.

The high taxes was definitely a strong motivation for moving as well. Remote jobs don't pay as well and I think over time there will be downward pressure on tech salaries as workers become more spread out but in terms of compensation compared to standard of living I think it is an improvement.

Everything also feels modern and clean compared to the bay area. Roads are maintained, dramatically less traffic, parking is easy to find (especially problematic for those who have a truck in the bay area), utility rates and internet are cheaper. Stores and restaurants are open later. The bay area, especially SF seemed really cramped and kind of grungy in comparison.

It will be interesting to see what happens after the pandemic but my thinking is that there will still be an exodus due to remote work still being common place and accepted.

Socially I was able to make friends and network extremely fast. That might be a Vegas thing specifically though.

After a few months now I have no regrets and am very happy with how things are turning out.

Feel like this article is thin on people moving to Miami, so here's a short thread of people ID'd as moving to Miami in just the last seven days: https://twitter.com/bunsen/status/1335735136277688329

People believe on the Too Big to Fail fallacy. Silicon Valley only survived because it was a cyclic move, things became bad when companies got involved in politics and turned into legal monopolies. Silicon Valley was supposed to be a place for geeks and creative people, not just a bunch of lawyers running monopolies.

Blah blah blah. There are still a lot of people and companies based in Silicon Valley. If anything Silicon Valley will die a slow death, and that won’t be clear until after the covid dust settles. For now people are still paying absurd amounts for homes so no lack of people wanting to live there (yet)

There have been endless articles about Bay Area "exodus", yet I see suburban housing demand going through the roof. Many companies haven't committed to full WFH (Google, Uber, Airbnb, Doordash, Tesla comes to mind). I will wait for a while before writing Bay Area's obituary.

https://archive.is/JXyMX

https://archive.is/R1JB1

It has everything to do with the lack of overly constrictive employer non compete agreements. I personally do not want to live in a state that allows an employer to own the work of an employee that is created on personal time at personal cost. Its simple freedom, freedom to create.

The NIMBYs might get their wish...

How many are really leaving? A few thousand departures can result in a flood of rentals on the market, depressing prices.

Many articles on many subjects began with the writer observing a few people doing something and turn it into trend spotting.

The reason most of people went to CA is the same as the reason people went to US. Opportunity and money. People come, people go. Why does SF's supremacy matter? There is always next Silicon Valley.

There's more to "Silicon Valley" than San Francisco. I'd argue that SF isn't really part of the "Valley". Certainly not by a geographical definition of a valley.

Might be for the better.

It's interesting how quickly the conventional wisdom shifted from "You have to be in the Bay Area if you want to do X!" to it not mattering.

Genuine question: Are the the local communities who complained about tech people raising price are now happy/satisfied?

Do not move to Texas please if you plan to vote the same way that has made California as unbearable as it is today.

given how much the locals hate techies, the migration couldn't happen soon enough. I haven't been in SF in 4 years and its been great. I made valuable contacts but beyond that, there isn't much SF offers now that remote work is becoming mainstream

Click Bait for Business Insider.

I can't read this article because this site is blocking me from doing so.

If you hit <esc> at just the right time you can get it before the article disappears.

Paywalled, can anyone provide a summary?

https://archive.vn/JXyMX

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

To me, 'supremacy' sounds scary -- not positive at all. Too much misuse of all kinds of perceived supremacy.

This is wonderful, in my opinion. The bay area has become crowded and expensive. Looking forward to that changing :-)

It always felt to me like everybody likes to hype up the amount of people leaving in the hope that people actually leave and the rent might go down.

I don't think people really want leave San Francisco and the few unlucky ones that do will pay even more rent when they come back as soon as things start booming again.

PLEASE LEAVE. WE DONT WANT YOU HERE. LEAVE. BEGONE. GOOD RIDDANCE.

Note that I have no evidence to support this hypothesis, and I would love if someone would prove me wrong, but I suspect the following:

- The "Tech Elite" who are leaving are, by definition, the ones who have the financial freedom to go pretty much wherever they want. Anyone mentioned in this article could buy a house in Miami/Austin/Denver without worrying about any transaction costs if they turn around and sell it in 6 months.

- SF (and California in general) are being much more aggressive with anti-COVID policies.

- The cities that are being focused on (Miami and Austin) are overall pretending that COVID isn't a thing (I live in Austin, and this is my experience).

- Well-off individuals currently under lock-down are looking at people living "freely" in Florida/Texas and are jealous, because they think that the SF-lockdown rules shouldn't apply to them, because they are less at risk (this is a discussion for another day)

- They've now set themselves up with a plausible "I moved out of California. My reason was COVID." story to try to avoid paying California state taxes in the future, even if they still end up being back in SF the majority of the time for their business.

tldr; the "elites" leaving are moving for short-term quality-of-life improvements due to COVID, and will have no issue turning around and moving back in 6-12 months when SF is "open for business" again.

Update: I have seen the shift in Austin from watching stories/tweets/social-media of people who have been moving from SF -> Austin. I was excited at first of the prospect of Austin become a much larger tech city, but am now noticing that the overwhelming majority of this content (although I could easily be seeing a biased sample, of course) is that the vocal group of "I moved from SF to Austin" is the same group that is extremely excited to go out to restaurants and public events again.

What's wrong with going to restaurants and public events? If people don't want to be locked down, there's not much you can do about that.

I did not state one way or the other in my comment about whether it was right or wrong, and frankly my opinion on that topic is not of importance to my point here.

I stated that it seems clear that these people are moving way from temporary restrictions (by relocating to places that do not have the same restrictions), and that there is no guarantee that any of these will be 'permanent' moves after those restrictions are no longer applicable.

It's certainly a factor, but "temporary" concerns are probably not significant enough to cause people to move. Moving is a big ordeal unless you are young and can pack everything you own into a car.

This article, and my comment, are discussion insanely wealthy individuals who have co-founded, led, or exited from very large companies (Splunk, Palantir, Opendoor, Dropbox, etc), or run VC firms.

Moving is much less of a big deal when your primary residence is a minuscule portion of your net worth and you are almost definitely paying someone else to handle all of the logistics of a move.

Paywalled, so can't read it. But most of the comments assume "remote work" will be de facto from this point on. Not sure I'm ready to bite that worm yet.

It's depressing to see yet another intellectual 'bubble' sweep through the Internet and the educated parts of society, especially one that falls apart so easily under a little scrutiny (as they all do).

The cost of living in the Bay Area reflects extremely high demand for living there. Other than some people becoming more comfortable with remote work, what will have changed when the pandemic ends?

You can't visit SF and not see that it's a special place. An amazingly dynamic, exciting city filled with creativity, culture, beauty, resources (including two elite universities and many others), natural resources, etc. People LOVE San Francisco (and many other cities).

Cities in general are well-documented and researched as the great economic and cultural engines of our societies. It's not hard to see why or how that would be. We all knew it well; then suddenly it became trendy to forget it.

We know well the subtext of the new anti-urbanism: Reactionary politics. The reactionaries in the US (primarily the Republican Party and sympathizers) have been trying to denigrate cities for many years because, despite the facts on their success, cities are strongly liberal, ethnically diverse, and pro-Democratic. As an example, Trump tried to make it the focus of his campaign over the summer and a/the major focus of the Republican convention, though that fizzled.

Taxes are bad (by definition!), liberalism is bad, protestors are bad, college education is bad, homeless people are bad ... it's a highly conservative perspective - conservative as in, 'protect existing interests' - rather one that reflects a belief in progress, knowledge, change, and in the potential in every person (not just the wealthy ones) to do great things. Cities are inherently optimistic and reactionaryism is inherently pessimistic - why choose the latter, other than that is where the social herd is running? How will that turn out?

The IT industry didn't discover remote work in the last year; it might have been forced on reluctant managers in some industries, but we knew it very well. Companies tried it years ago, and then walked it back (I remember them telling employees they had to come back to the office). Nothing replaces the dynamism of meeting people in the hallway, seeing people face-to-face, etc. Remember everything SV companies invested to keep their employees at work and having fun? Now they think it's the same if they are home and isolated from each other?

Bubbles in finance are about ideas, not money. People feel compelled by the normalization of a social tide. If you think you're too smart for it, you are a prime target.

"That's a good thing"® ™

Rabois is a clown, an arrogant jerk who isn't worth taking seriously. Even if you ignore his multiple sexual harassment scandals, it's very clear that he's a hypocrite on this issue and therefore should not be taken seriously on this or any issue. After all, he claims to want to solve big problems, and ostensibly there is no bigger problem in his world than this. And yet, he wants to cut and run; why?

Well, it starts with the fact that he's only got one hammer, and that hammer is to give the white kid from Stanford $10 million, and then backup that investment by subsidizing losses in a race to monopoly. If and when it works, Rabois then takes the credit. But this is a problem that he can't solve, certainly not in the way he solves things, and even if he did, it would run up against the libertarian fantasies that infuse every tweet he writes. As opposed to admitting failure and admitting that his narrow-range expertise doesn't apply to everything, he runs to Miami instead, proving that he's simply a rent-seeker fraud there to sap the area of its resources until the resources are dry, complaining the entire time about how unfairly he's been treated in that he hasn't been getting his ass kissed in the manner in which he's become familiar.

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