Will have to agree here. As someone who's working from Canada, this post is semi-funny.
I've worked from SF October to January, and let me tell you that biking around town in a t-shirt is not winter.
I've worked from SF October to January, and let me tell you that biking around town in a t-shirt is not winter.
When it's dark when you go into work, and you don't have a corner office, and it's dark when you leave your body gets no sunlight. For some, this has a profound effect on mood.
SF's shortest day of the year is 9.4 hours long. Toronto's shortest day is 8.7 hours long, and Toronto is one of Canada's southern-most cities. Montreal and Quebec City have it worse, but those poor damned Calgarians take the cake with only 7.7 hours of daylight on Christmas.
Only about 45 minutes difference from SF here in Hamilton, but still, it's that much closer to being completely eclipsed by the 8-hour workday.
Which brings up the mythological tradition that "real programmers" at "real companies" all work 60 to 80 hour death marches all the time, err, at least according to people who (edited to add: think they) make money when their employees go on death marches. Anyway even in summer I think a potential SAD suffer could theoretically spend weeks not seeing sunlight, and that might be an interesting factor in programming death marches. I'm not trying to encourage a new dotcom management fad of "deathmarches are OK as long as you install bright lights by the Foosball table" but it is interesting to contemplate.
I never stop being surprised y how temperate Western European climates are at equivalent (or higher!) latitudes to ours. "Surprised" is a bit of a euphemism—"pissed off" might be more like it :)
One compensation where I live is that even when the days are cold and short, they are usually brilliantly sunny.
Being in California I was very surprised on a trip to Kansas City once, went from beach weather to snow drifts. A warm ocean nearby makes a huge difference.
I was only imagining how this blog post would of been about 10x its size if the author lived in Norway or Finland. It's good to keep an eye on these things but luckily for the author, SF is one of the places where the sun hits the most, even in the winter.
I just really hate wearing jackets in the city and prefer to endure than to wear one.