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That pretty much describes where I live in Berkeley. I'm within easy walking distance of some nice short hikes and reasonable driving distance of more intense h
by tikhonj 10y ago
That pretty much describes where I live in Berkeley. I'm within easy walking distance of some nice short hikes and reasonable driving distance of more intense hikes or rock climbing. It's not literally in the mountains but there are some pretty incredible hills, forests and, of course, ocean beaches.
I also don't see how being "NOT surrounded" by tech events could possibly be a good thing. If you're not interested, you don't have to go. It's not like tech is forced on everyone! But if you suddenly feel like going to an engaging talk—whether it's on a JS framework or on combinatorial game theory—you always have the option. You wouldn't have that choice otherwise.
- jonknee 10y ago> I also don't see how being "NOT surrounded" by tech events could possibly be a good thing. If you're not interested, you don't have to go. The monoculture of "tech" is a grind after you visit other places. The Bay Area is a fine place if you get excited by networking events and like asking people at a bar about their deck, but I find it mind-numbing.
- sethhochberg 10y agoIt was one of the primary reasons I left SF for NYC. There is still world-class tech employment to be found here, but it is surrounded by world-class industries of all other kinds, too. My tech employee friends in NYC, who work for respected names and are great at what they do, don't spend weekends at hackathons or weeknights running from tech office to tech office for free food at meetups. Here, it is okay and even normal to finish a work day and go experience art, culture, history, etc... things which all do exist in SF and are often great quality there, for sure, but which in certain employment circles seem to be pretty much ignored. To each their own.
- shostack 10y agoNYC has some pretty brutal work life balance expectations in pretty much every industry I've talked to people from. Outside of SV startups, many companies in the Bay have reasonable hours. There is definitely a workaholic expectation in NYC.
- tikhonj 10y agoThat's a common sentiment, but woefully exaggerated: it's not like the Bay Area is only tech. I mean, it's not New York, but neither is anywhere else in the country. The Bay Area has all the art and culture and music you'd expect of a cosmopolitan city, it has the same generic business/sales/finance/law professionals, it has two of the best universities in the country. It has everything you'd get elsewhere and tech. It's a perfectly diverse metropolitan area with tech as an addition, not as a replacement. That's strictly more than many other cities I've spent time in from Ottawa to Charlotte. Calling it a monoculture is simply not accurate or, if it is, so many cities don't have even that.
- potatolicious 10y agoEhh, I don't think it's exaggerated at all - having lived both in SF and NYC. There exists things that aren't tech in SF, but the scale of which is much lower than other major cities like NYC. More importantly though, even in non-tech scenes, tech is always there. It's the guy at the party that seems to find you no matter how much you move around the room. I found it suffocating - no matter where you go you can never fully disengage from the industry. The measure of a tech monoculture isn't (IMO) the existence of other things, it's whether or not tech tags along with all of these other things.
- zhemao 10y agoRight, because that's the only thing to do in the Bay Area. There are plenty of cultural events in SF not involving tech. Museums, art shows, live music, etc.
- jonknee 10y agoYes, those things also exist in every other city and they [mostly] manage to do it without the hordes of brogrammers.