8 ms·

I pay about that for rent - it's the most I've ever paid for housing by a long shot, and it regularly freaks me out. I just can't get used to it. The thing th

• bogomipz 11y ago
  Really - "This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world"? I'm calling BS. Have you been to New York City recently? Rents for a 1 bedroom are nowhere near that. Lets talk about that community - there are meetups? Wow. You can go to a meetup on any night of the week in New York or Austin. Besides that explain "the community"? Oh you go out and drink craft beers after work? You can do that anywhere. Whats this different lifestyle of which you speak? Dodging panhandlers on Market Street? Stepping over human excrement? Using Uber b/c the city in which you have chosen to piss away your money doesn't provide decent mass transit for most? People like you perpetuate some myth that you have to pay $4500 a month if you want to work in tech. Nonsense.
  • funkaster 11y ago
    I live in SF and 100% agree with you. There's nothing in SF that you can't find in some other place. I do like living here, but I don't see myself living here longer than a few years. If I had to start my own tech company, I would probably have the exec team here (because of VCs, really, that's the only reason, not a "tech thriving community") and build my team in EU, maybe Berlin. We're currently hiring at my job and it's getting harder and harder to get high quality candidates.
    • Apocryphon 11y ago
      Maybe build your hypothetical tech team in Montreal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11424876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11424876
  • msutherl 11y ago
    Perhaps if you are an engineer this perspective entirely makes sense, but if you're an investor, entrepreneur, or in any other occupation where 'the ecosystem' matters, you'll find that nothing compares to the Bay Area. This isn't about going to a meetup or going out for craft beer, it's about access to resources behind closed (unlocked) doors. But listen, I used to live in New York and there's a lot there too – just less, and a different vibe. The decision between living in New York or San Francisco should really come down to your particular interests.
    • thegayngler 11y ago
      I totally agree with this sentiment. This is what I am debating now. I do think that San Fran area can do better by at least making the surrounding areas AMAZING rather than trying to make San Francisco proper happen now. I think working around the initial problem could end up having a positive effect on San Francisco proper. Smaller towns and suburbs should be easier to upgrade than a larger one.
    • Apocryphon 11y ago
      The hope implicit in this conversation is that founders and funders might hear the disgruntlement of the engineers, and send some of their money and efforts to other cities, to do a little to grow an ecosystem elsewhere. It's a vain hope dependent on deaf ears, as much as the "build, baby, build!" plea to zoning boards or "stop grifting your tenants" to landlords, but it still needs to be made. Someone's gotta give, and it can't just always be the tech workers and aspirant homebuyers and renters and all those with less power in these asymmetrical relationships.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • hellameta 11y ago
    > People like you perpetuate some myth that you have to pay $4500 a month if you want to work in tech. Nonsense. This is a little harsh and I doubt what the OP was saying. If someone interprets it like you suggested that is their problem. I don't see the implication that you NEED to live in SV to work in tech. I don't think anyone claims that you can't find thriving tech communities outside of SV, but the reality that OP put forth is undeniably true. SV is where the most money is. SV is where most of the talent goes. SV churns out its own home grown talent through 2 of the best schools in the world. Did the automative industry all move to NY & Austin? No. They moved to SV (not exclusively, but I'm sure you've seen the map of automative companies moving in to SV). Hollywood isn't the only place you can make movies and SV isn't the only place you can make software or start software based companies... but how are you going to deny that they are the most thriving communities in the world respectively?
    • bogomipz 11y ago
      That is what the OP said. I was quoting him. Where is the harshness? Really the auto industry moved to SV? I'm pretty sure they are all in Detroit still, but I guess that doesn't count because its not Tesla? Who I don't believe moved there but actually started there. Funny that you should mention Hollywood because Hollywood isn't thriving in Los Angeles, California any more and hasn't for some time. Hollywood is in Vancouver, New Orleans, and Atlanta now. So much so that there's a push in Sacramento to try to get it back. Also interesting that you bring up "the most money" as testament to how much its thriving. You need to get paid a much higher salary in order to live in a place that is "thriving" and as a result are able to take home and substantially less. Incidentally salaries in NYC are on par with those in SV and the rent is significantly cheaper.
      • JBReefer 11y ago
        Yeah, exactly to your point, Cadillac _did_ just move to Manhattan.
  • TranquilMarmot 11y ago
    I don't agree with the amount of vitriol in your comment, but I agree with the overall sentiment. I feel like tech workers in San Francisco are fully bought-in to the "this is the best and only place to be if you're in tech" idea. So much so that they can't quite see that the grass is just as green on the other side, so to speak. You have to be fully bought-in to it, there's no other way you would be able to justify the cost of living there. I'm curious about the different lifestyles- I live in Seattle and there's startups and meetups and hacker spaces all over the damn place, with decent public transportation, awesome coffee and beer and restaurants and anything else you could want. Maybe not as many conferences, but they're a quick flight away if you really want to go.
    • nostrademons 11y ago
      I'm curious if you've lived in the Bay Area for any length of time. I used to live in Boston (which at the time was the #2 tech scene in the country, but has probably been eclipsed by Seattle/NYC/Austin by now). There were startups and meetups and hacker spaces as well, including a number of famous ones. The Bay Area is a huge difference in degree. The difference is that you had to find the "tech scene" in Boston, while in Silicon Valley, tech is the scene. If you go out for coffee, nearly everybody in the coffeeshop will be working on some tech startup. If you sit down at a restaurant, there's a good chance that the table next to you will have a group of engineers from some large tech company, or an investor being pitched by an entrepreneur, or a group of friends planning a startup. If you go to a random party - even ones thrown by non-techies - half the people there will work in tech.
      • potatolicious 11y ago
        > "in Silicon Valley, tech is the scene. If you go out for coffee, nearly everybody in the coffeeshop will be working on some tech startup. If you sit down at a restaurant, there's a good chance that the table next to you will have a group of engineers from some large tech company, or an investor being pitched by an entrepreneur, or a group of friends planning a startup. If you go to a random party - even ones thrown by non-techies - half the people there will work in tech." Half sounds like an underestimate, probably more like 80%. All of the above is why I left the Bay Area. I love tech, but geez. It's like loving chocolate and living in a chocolate house eating chocolate for every meal. I got about 6 months into that before a switch flipped and it became the most aggravating, insufferable thing ever.
  • ak4g 11y ago
    I lived in NYC and frequented it's tech scene for about a year, ending mid-2013. Unless it's more-or-less quintupled in the last three years, there's no comparison. The first python meetup I went to in SF (back in 2013) had 300 spots and a waitlist that I doubt got cleared. The NYC meetups I went to managed maybe 80 RSVPs and a couple dozen who actually showed up. Once you get to anything more specialized than a programming language meetup, it's basically non-existent anywhere else in the country, but the bay area will still manage an active user group. I really wish this weren't the case, and I really resisted moving here. I had every expectation I'd hate it and the city has more than lived down to expectations (easily higher rent and worse crime than NYC - or least the tech enclaves of NYC where I spent my time - by healthy margins). It is absurd and frankly unjustifiable how densely tech is concentrated here. But that it is so isn't really debatable.
    • bogomipz 11y ago
      So a meetup with 24 new people to network with wasn't enough for you? It's better to have meetup that you can't attend because there's a waitlist? How is that better? So far all I hear is density. Is density of tech workers the arbiter by which you just how good a "scene", I will take quality any day. Are all of them awesome, engaging, friendly and social and supportive?
      • ak4g 11y ago
        I did make the Python meetup and several since; it's not like the waitlist was thousands long. It was just longer than what I gauged as the no-show rate. The Python meetup was striking to me because it was closer to the scale of a PyCon than any meetup I'd seen. The actual meetup I attend more often is SFPUG, the local PostgreSQL group, which is more in the neighborhood of 20-40 attendees, once or twice a month. In NYC, if there is an active group around the particular corner of tech you inhabit, you're lucky to get decent meetup a quarter. And quality is what pushed me to move here, despite my expectations, in the first place. Simply put, all of the very best developers I knew from my hometown (in Charlotte, before my stint in New York) had moved here. There were two in particular I'll always owe for having opened my eyes to how little I knew; I work maybe eight blocks away from one of them, the other I ran into out-of-the-blue at the aforementioned Python meetup, three days after I landed at SFO. I've been working with people who make me very aware that I'm not the smartest person in the room (by their expertise, not their attitudes) for 30 months now. I do hate to say this, but it is why I didn't stick around in the end - in NYC, I really, really missed that.
  • kafkaesq 11y ago
    "This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world"? Together with SV and the rest of the Bay Area, yes. You really can't compare the sheer size (multiplied by grey matter density) with any other place in the world.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • rconti 11y ago
    Congrats on your meetups. What we do here is not go to meetups because you don't have to. Another commenter captured it better than I can. It's everywhere. It's just a huge sense of excitement. It's the jobs, the energy. I don't live in SF, I live on the Peninsula. I don't go to meetups or bars or participate in "the scene". I just live my life, but I'm surrounded by tech and I love it. I first started working in tech in Seattle and moved to the Bay Area a dozen years ago, and I just love it. shrug If it doesn't work for you, fine, don't live here. I'm quite happy. I find pay scales with costs. For a working-from-an-office job, I'm able to pay the bills and the mortgage and save up faster than I think I could anywhere else. Obviously you can always find an employer and then swing some deal where they let you live in Kansas and keep the same pay and hope you never lose your job, but in terms of the average in-person office jobs, I think it can't be beat. You hear people outside major tech areas saying things like "man, I could never afford to live there." You know what you never hear people in high cost of living areas say? "Man, I can't afford to get out." You can always afford to get out, but you might not be able to afford to get back in. I'm not on a Mr Money Moustache plan to retire at age 23, but I think the economics basically work.
  • Gratsby 11y ago
    You quoted just a piece of it. > This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world. We live different lifestyles as a result. It's not better or worse, just different. I've been all over, including New York. I didn't appreciate Silicon Valley for what it is until I moved here. Do you have to pay that kind of money to work in tech? Not at all. You don't even have to pay that kind of money to work in tech in the bay area. There are plenty of commuting options and there are plenty of tech communities all over the US. What's different? I would counter with What's not different? I've been here a year and I have had conversations with founders of Netflix, Instagram, Uber, GreatSchools, and twenty others that you probably haven't heard of. I also met one of the guys who invented ethernet. I'm not particularly social or particularly important. In southern CA, I was isolated - I had a few friends who really understood what I did for work. Here, most people I meet do. I went to a small conference a few weeks ago and had engineers from Adobe sit with me until I had a working implementation of software that included their CreativeSDK. I have never had that kind of experience at a conference. My elementary school kids have a maker studio at their school where they have 3d printers, programmable robots, sewing machines, and all kinds of other cool things. My middle school kid has photoshop and web design classes as part of her curriculum. They have carts full of laptops, iPads, etc. that they pull into classrooms as needed, and other classrooms that are completely teched out. There are plenty of downsides that go with all the great things. I have to think three times about whether I take my family out for dinner because the cost of eating out is like the cost of housing - it just doesn't make sense to me. There are communities of people nearby who live out of motor homes parked on the street. There are dangerous areas that you have to watch out for. On a given day driving the kids through Golden Gate Park might result in running into a pack of naked bike riders. I have to warn all the out of town visitors about the tenderloin. It's not better. It's different. Just like NY is different. You can live there for years without needing a car. You can see the best shows with the best artists. I imagine living there you meet all kinds of interesting people. But as far as tech community goes, nothing compares to Silicon Valley. I choose to pay more in rent because it gives my family access to great schools, it means that I don't lose family time to driving time and it means I can participate in what's going on locally, which is usually pretty awesome. It's a premium, but for me and my family I just wouldn't be able to make it work adding in a big commute. For many people it doesn't make sense. I could have a bigger house and less financial pressure living just about anywhere else. I made more money outside the bay area. But here I'm with my people and while I used to love my kids' old schools, the ones I have access to now are a world apart. Up until I moved here, I didn't even know there was a community of "my people".
• malchow 11y ago
  Rents are where they are because of state and local governmental policy. I beg you to go out and find a real estate investor to talk to. In any city in the world with a functioning open market for land use, there are compelling profit opportunities in high-density high-rises, economy box living pods with beige walls, high-end glass condos with verandahs, and everything in between. Prices do not have to do with the Bay Area's beauty. The draw is economic. And if policies do not moderate, it is a draw which can go away as quickly as it arrived.
  • jandrese 11y ago
    The prices are directly a result of the Bay Area's beauty. The whole reason the prices are so high is that the city has been absolute in its refusal to let people build giant hideous skyscrapers that would block the view of the bay. Those same ugly monstrosities would provide hundreds of apartments and dig the city out of its ridiculous housing shortage. Rents are high because demand is high and supply is low. Demand is high because there are lots of jobs there. Supply is low because the city refuses to allow high density development. It's a great deal for the people who already own homes and are planning to move out. They can sell their homes for a fortune and live like a king somewhere else.
    • bogomipz 11y ago
      I don't know how true this is. Have you seen the amount of new construction going on in SF? Soma, Mission Bay, Indian Basin, thats all new. I doubt it's going to drive rents down in any way however.
  • mcguire 11y ago
    Really? It doesn't have anything to do with an industry that recently moved in and started shovelling money around like it came out of the back end of a barnyard animal?
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]