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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

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.
- pound 11y ago
  but is it a good thing? even if you're an engineer.
  - bogomipz 11y ago
    Its a good thing if you are a well rounded human being and an engineer. There is no shortage of opportunities for an engineer in NYC - Google, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, Etsy, Thoughtworks, Pivotal Labs and on and on on. Yes, you can be an engineer and meet people who do other things with their professional lives.
    - pound 11y ago
      Oh, I wasn't talking about NYC. It was regarding 'tech is the scene' description. Sounds like a hell and I'm an engineer.
      - kough 11y ago
        I did it for two years; it became my own little personal idea of hell. Never going back.
  - bogomipz 11y ago
    Ha. Yeah. I went to a tech talk that an ex-Tumblr engineer gave, he left New York and Tumblr for a job in SV with Facebook. He was talking about his new home and said something to the effect that "it was really strange to be in line at the grocery store and here the people in back of him talking about Redis." Ha ha ha.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  "while in Silicon Valley, tech is the scene." Yes that about sums up a monoculture for me. Contrast this with a city like New York where you also have publishing, finance, advertising as well as solid tech.
- wott 11y ago
  > 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. What you describe is an unbearable nightmare.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Depends who you are and what you want, like most things in life. It was great for my first couple years here, when I really wanted to go deep into the field and learn all I could. I had my "become a well-rounded person" phase in college, so by my 20s I was happy to specialize deeply. It was less great for years 3-5, when I ended up meeting and marrying a non-techie. It's been good again for me now, founding a startup, because of the huge number of potential customers everywhere. There's a huge difference between an abundance mentality vs. a scarcity mentality that having a large number of customers/employees/investors nearby creates.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
trhway 11y ago
>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. man, it is freedom. Freedom of employment in this case. At any moment i can leave current employer and get another job. I'm not afraid about layoffs or pissing off my manager. Until you taste the freedom, it is hard to explain it. The same way like explaining general freedom that we still have some amount of here in the US to the people back in my old country.
- trhway 11y ago
  >not afraid ... pissing off my manager. to make clear closely related point - being free from fear makes for better employees than otherwise as such employees have an option of calling waste/stupidity/etc when they see it.
- Ologn 11y ago
  How free it is depends on the times. In 2000, the dot-com bubble collapsed. This spilled over a little into Fortune 500 companies, but not as much as it affected startups and tech companies. I left my dot-com in New York and went to work at an investment bank. A lot of people I know in the Bay area were in tougher straits - some who had moved there left. Sometimes there are advantages to a city being dependent on one industry, sometimes there are disadvantages.
bogomipz 11y ago
Vitriol really? Because I said "BS"? It certainly wasn't meant to be vitriolic, I didn't think there was anything abusive in my post. Exasperation? Yes. Cynicism. Ditto.
- louprado 11y ago
  Well... the poster suggesting your vitriol does go by the name "Tranquil". If you must know, dismissive phrases such as, "people like you", isn't a mature way to strengthen a counter argument.
  - bogomipz 11y ago
    Funny. Fair enough. I could have articulated that better. To the OP, I'm sorry it wasn't meant to be mean.
  - bogomipz 11y ago
    Funny. Fair enough. I could have articulated that better. To the OP I apologize, it wasn't meant to be mean.
mahyarm 11y ago
I live in oakland, which is like living in beacon hill in seattle if your commute was driving to microsoft. Rent for me is only a few hundred dollars a month more, and I get paid better in the bay then I would working in seattle. You can also get 1 bedroom apartments close to palo alto caltrain for about $2500, which is a fairly premium place to live. There are many places in the bay area where the rent isn't $4500 for a 1 bedroom, and your a fool if you go rent those places. The price for newcomers is far higher than the price for people who lived here 5 years ago.

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.
pound 11y ago
but is it a good thing? even if you're an engineer.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  Its a good thing if you are a well rounded human being and an engineer. There is no shortage of opportunities for an engineer in NYC - Google, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, Etsy, Thoughtworks, Pivotal Labs and on and on on. Yes, you can be an engineer and meet people who do other things with their professional lives.
  - pound 11y ago
    Oh, I wasn't talking about NYC. It was regarding 'tech is the scene' description. Sounds like a hell and I'm an engineer.
    - kough 11y ago
      I did it for two years; it became my own little personal idea of hell. Never going back.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  Ha. Yeah. I went to a tech talk that an ex-Tumblr engineer gave, he left New York and Tumblr for a job in SV with Facebook. He was talking about his new home and said something to the effect that "it was really strange to be in line at the grocery store and here the people in back of him talking about Redis." Ha ha ha.
bogomipz 11y ago
"while in Silicon Valley, tech is the scene." Yes that about sums up a monoculture for me. Contrast this with a city like New York where you also have publishing, finance, advertising as well as solid tech.
wott 11y ago
> 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. What you describe is an unbearable nightmare.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Depends who you are and what you want, like most things in life. It was great for my first couple years here, when I really wanted to go deep into the field and learn all I could. I had my "become a well-rounded person" phase in college, so by my 20s I was happy to specialize deeply. It was less great for years 3-5, when I ended up meeting and marrying a non-techie. It's been good again for me now, founding a startup, because of the huge number of potential customers everywhere. There's a huge difference between an abundance mentality vs. a scarcity mentality that having a large number of customers/employees/investors nearby creates.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

trhway 11y ago

>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. man, it is freedom. Freedom of employment in this case. At any moment i can leave current employer and get another job. I'm not afraid about layoffs or pissing off my manager. Until you taste the freedom, it is hard to explain it. The same way like explaining general freedom that we still have some amount of here in the US to the people back in my old country.

trhway 11y ago
>not afraid ... pissing off my manager. to make clear closely related point - being free from fear makes for better employees than otherwise as such employees have an option of calling waste/stupidity/etc when they see it.
Ologn 11y ago
How free it is depends on the times. In 2000, the dot-com bubble collapsed. This spilled over a little into Fortune 500 companies, but not as much as it affected startups and tech companies. I left my dot-com in New York and went to work at an investment bank. A lot of people I know in the Bay area were in tougher straits - some who had moved there left. Sometimes there are advantages to a city being dependent on one industry, sometimes there are disadvantages.

bogomipz 11y ago

Vitriol really? Because I said "BS"? It certainly wasn't meant to be vitriolic, I didn't think there was anything abusive in my post. Exasperation? Yes. Cynicism. Ditto.

louprado 11y ago
Well... the poster suggesting your vitriol does go by the name "Tranquil". If you must know, dismissive phrases such as, "people like you", isn't a mature way to strengthen a counter argument.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  Funny. Fair enough. I could have articulated that better. To the OP, I'm sorry it wasn't meant to be mean.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  Funny. Fair enough. I could have articulated that better. To the OP I apologize, it wasn't meant to be mean.

mahyarm 11y ago

I live in oakland, which is like living in beacon hill in seattle if your commute was driving to microsoft. Rent for me is only a few hundred dollars a month more, and I get paid better in the bay then I would working in seattle. You can also get 1 bedroom apartments close to palo alto caltrain for about $2500, which is a fairly premium place to live. There are many places in the bay area where the rent isn't $4500 for a 1 bedroom, and your a fool if you go rent those places. The price for newcomers is far higher than the price for people who lived here 5 years ago.