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I grew up in San Diego before spending 20 years in the Bay Area. While I totally understand why a fresh graduate would want to head north to the bay, I think as
by mapgrep 10y ago
I grew up in San Diego before spending 20 years in the Bay Area. While I totally understand why a fresh graduate would want to head north to the bay, I think as a place to CREATE a startup, San Diego has tremendous potential.
The weather is beautiful and actually beats SF. It's close to 70 year round, nice and dry, with great beaches and mountain and desert hiking. As the article notes downtown has been evolving in a really promising direction, to say nothing of classic beach spots like Del Mar, La Jolla, Pacific Beach, etc. For getaways there is LA, Mexico, skiing at Big Bear.
The computer science program at UCSD is typically ranked about 15th globally, CalTech is not terribly far north, nor is UCLA and UC Irvine and UCSB and UC Riverside, and SDSU, though it has a reputation as a party school, is no slouch.
Meanwhile the housing is still affordable compared to the Bay Area, if not cheap on a national basis. And the Valley is an hourlong Southwest flight away.
More important there is a real diversity of industry still in San Diego, with lots of biotech, defense (contracting and the actual Navy), aerospace, and health.
Thirty years ago, the Bay Area/Valley had a very San Diego feel to it. Easy to forget now, but it was a pretty laid back place where an ordinary person could buy a nice spread in the suburbs and where starting a business in your garage was a reasonable thing to attempt in a borderline casual way. You get the impression people smoked a lot of pot and spent a lot of time relaxing, whether in hot tubs or on hiking trails or wherever. It was a California lifestyle. The Bay Area feels like New York now, except with tech and better weather — just very intense. San Diego still feels like California.
I'm not saying it'll ever match the Bay Area/Valley as a tech hub; the lead in Northern California is too great. But San Diego should be at or near the top of the list of secondary hubs, in my biased opinion.
- RCortex 10y ago> Meanwhile the housing is still affordable compared to the Bay Area, if not cheap on a national basis. And the Valley is an hourlong Southwest flight away. I see lots of >$1 million homes and >$1500/month rents for apartments, in the suburbs. Do you have any specific areas in mind? I'm thinking about moving.
- douche 10y agoI think the key qualifier there is "compared to the Bay Area"
- roadnottaken 10y agoIn north county, places like Rancho Penasquitos (92129) have great schools and you can find decent single-family homes in the low $600's these days. It's about 15 minutes from the coast without traffic -- 25 mins from downtown. Nearby areas like Mira Mesa and Clairemont are cheaper but the public schools aren't as good.
- niels_olson 10y agoShhhhh! Just shhhhhusshh!
- monkmartinez 10y agoI don't think you have to worry... there is a NET outflow of people living in California[1]. Why? My mother always said if you don't have anything nice to say about a group of people, don't say anything at all. [1]https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-exodus-closer-look-5853.html https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-ex...
- khuey 10y agoThere's a net outflow when considering purely domestic migration, maybe. California's population is still growing, driven by immigration and births.
- monkmartinez 10y ago$600,000 is affordable? How about smart? I don't mean to chide, but $600,000 for a cookie cutter tract-home is down right absurd. California is nuts.
- fossuser 10y ago
- 0xCMP 10y agoYea NYC and SF are my favorite cities. I think you cleared up for me why that is.
- mhb_eng 10y agoAs an engineer who also grew up in San Diego and now works here full-time, I totally agree. I think there is tremendous potential for innovation in San Diego, the hardest part is finding investors. As you said, there are many great universities nearby, with plenty of young talent who might be disenfranchised with the high cost of living/lifestyle of SV(or maybe that's just me,the disenfranchised part, not the talent). As a robotics/mechanical guy, it can be a little overwhelming to consider a startup, because prototyping hardware gadgets is pricey! But I have been looking at something like SBIR/STTR funding, because most of my widgets are navy/defense focused. I would say some potential founders could use the same funding to build software, especially considering you don't have to give up any commercialization rights or ownership stake to get the funding.
- cushychicken 10y agoSBIR is a neat program. I tried applying once but didn't get the grant. I've heard tell that they tend to favor PIs with advanced degrees. Sadly, I only have a bachelor's.
- jglodo 10y agofind a university collaborator (it might help with credibility if you do not have a good footing in the field) and go for it.
- tzs 10y ago> The computer science program at UCSD is typically ranked about 15th globally, CalTech is not terribly far north, nor is UCLA and UC Irvine and UCSB and UC Riverside, and SDSU, though it has a reputation as a party school, is no slouch. Also USC and Harvey Mudd.
- jennyjenjen 10y agoYes! Thanks for mentioning Harvey Mudd. Great school.
- pcsanwald 10y agoAs someone who lived in NYC for 17 years and moved to SF 6 months ago, my anecdotal experience so far is that SF is nowhere near as intense as NYC, at least as far as workplace environment goes. Everything feels considerably more laid back to me.
- hkmurakami 10y agoCurious about the individuals' drive to succeed, make money, be known, and to "make it". The west coasts trains you to be discreet about your ambitions, hard work, struggles, etc.[1] It's the cool thing to do. So you might have to look for subtle signs. [1] grew up in SV, went to east coast Wall Street feeder school.
- jasode 10y agoVenture capitalist Mark Suster makes an interesting case for why Los Angeles would have the greatest chance at being #2 behind Silicon Valley. This comment is not meant to dampen anyone's thunder in playing up San Diego. Instead, the intention is for others to listen to how Mark sells Los Angeles. Take notes on how he describes the successes of LA that can lead to greater things. Plagiarize his persuasive narrative style as a template for selling San Diego's business potential. (E.g. mentally do search&replace of LA companies to SD companies). That way, people hear more than just SD's great weather and more affordable housing. The entire 2hr20min interview has amazing insights across a wide range of topics but here are some deep links specifically about the LA scene: - Los Angeles tech successes: 1:01:11 - 1:15:07 -- deep link: https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=1h1m11s https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=1h1m11s - How University of California's commercialization philosophy (2% royalties) is different from Stanford University (equity) (fyi the "Anderson" he's referring to is UCLA's Anderson School of Management) 1:43:50 - 1:47:26 -- deep link: https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=1h43m50s https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=1h43m50s - Snapchat's potential ripple effects in Los Angeles' ecosystem 2:10:50 - 2:12:24 -- deep link: https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=2h10m50s https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=2h10m50s (If anyone likes those excerpts, put the Youtube player on 3x playback acceleration and watch the entire 2hr20mn talk. It's extremely educational.)
- mwfj 10y agoThere's so much selling in this post I get tired just by reading it.
- fredliu 10y agoIMO, Capital and Talents are the two major factors in determining whether or not a location has a potential to have a good and sustainable tech scene. You'd have to have good supply and demand for both to sustain a healthy tech scene, and the driving factor between the two is capital, not talents. The exodus of talents in SD is a symptom of weak local demand (not because of, say, not enough restaurant options); which in itself is a symptom of weak supply of capital. Any place's scale of tech scene reaches to a local equilibrium when the supply and demand for both factors levels up. Following that logic, San Diego seems to be going where that local equilibrium is, given the current scale of capital available in the region. But the fact that more VCs are looking at places outside of the bay may bring some hope to SD, depending on whether or not SD will be "the chosen city".
- runT1ME 10y agoI'm going to be the naysayer here and say that a year and a half back when I was looking for jobs I considered all options up and down the California coast. My conclusion from my search was that I will not be moving to San Diego. The salaries are far below Orange County, which are below Los Angeles, which are less than Bay Area salaries. Now, money isn't everything, but I'd say tech culture (in terms of technology, meetups, like minded folks) are also ranked in the same order. If someone wants to be a 'blub' programmer than SD is probably no worse than any other place, but someone looking to grow their career and have fun doing it, I'd recommend LA, OC, South Bay, and SF above SD whole heartedly.
- blackflame7000 10y agoIf you think the place where you program determines whether or not you are a 'blub' I believe you are sorely misguided.
- runT1ME 10y agoThat was not what I meant at all. I mean if you aren't particular about the technology stack you are working with and/or hoping for a high salary, then odds are more in your favor in SD, vs. being picky.
- EpicEng 10y agoYou come off as really full of yourself for a guy who sounds like he does little more than write CRUD apps with the FotM web stack.
- runT1ME 10y agoI'm not a web programmer at all, not sure why I come off that way. Also, since we're on HN, I assume most readers are familiar with PG's term 'Blub programmer', which more ore less means 'java' these days. shrug
- blackflame7000 10y ago
- cloudjacker 10y agoah okay, so basically the same reasons that everywhere else struggles to keep its tech talent.
- LukeG 10y agoI grew up in San Diego, have been working on tech in SF for almost a decade, and love the idea of moving back. The quality of life in (western) San Diego is so hard to beat. A couple dozen (or hundred) of us moving back with some meaningful experience and success could go a long way towards making San Diego a viable place to more easily build and sustain real companies.
- marter 10y agoHave you been back recently? I visited SD last month after being gone for 4 years... It was not the same to me. Very dry and dirty. Maybe living in Colorado has made me spoiled but it just seems different.
- LukeG 10y agoYeah I was there last month, and had fresh sashimi and fish tacos sitting on the the deck at Point Loma Seafoods, where it was still 70 degrees and glorious at 6pm. And then I flew home to a cold, gray SF ;)
- leesalminen 10y agoAfter living in Colorado for several years (not in Denver) every city I visit seems very dirty. And I grew up in NYC.
- laughfactory 10y agoThis. I'm from Montana, and while I love the weather here in SD, the glamour has worn off. The cost of living is astronomical, pay insufficient to compensate, and there are surprisingly few opportunities for what I do (Data Science). Oh, and while I love the beach (toxic water and all), I think a lot of SD is just... UGLY. Brown, dirty, desert. Of course part of this is all the hard scaping taking place. Everyone ripping up green and replacing with rocks and dirt isn't going to help things look pretty. All in all, my wife and I are looking for an exit. Unless I can start making six figures in the next six months I don't think we'll make it another year here. We've felt squeezed since we arrived and it's not getting any better. We've been here three years so far.
- erobbins 10y agoI grew up in SD too.. employment opportunities in general outside defense and tourism is not great. Neither is the pay. As the old joke goes, they pay you in sunshine.
- ftlio 10y agoLower cost of living and lower median income make it a total wash, with the more interesting jobs requiring Uncle Sam's security clearance. My dream scenario is getting my LA based company to switch manufacturer to TJ and set up the R&D office in San Diego, but I'm already thinking, 'what if I can't find good people in SD'.
- valgaze 10y ago"The weather is beautiful and actually beats SF" --respectfully, what the hell do you mean "actually"?? Weather-wise San Diego is quite literally paradise. There is no competition, SF stinks. There's no fog, sun every single day. Everyday can be beach day (and unlike here when you go to the beach you don't get bundled up like a J Crew catalog and bring blankets-- not towels-- and shiver like isosceles on some muggy wet sandy beach.) We need to get going on the revolution and get out of these lame, expensive $2200+ apartment complexes and get after San Diego. Bad part about San Diego, besides dearth of opportunity right this minute (but it's changing apparently), is that it's pretty dull. There are little pockets of civilization but it's almost like San Jose in some parts. San Diego's big problem it seems like is that you need to be at Qualcomm or some biotech or government contracting company to exist there. Or if you have some special gem that happens to be in San Diego, then that works too. But short of that there's not a lot of opportunity unless you really know where to look. Young talent needs to get out of there if they want to grow a bit in whatever they're doing. San Diego is a truly amazing place. What's awesome is you can also get down to Mexico for dinner and come back same night. Great city but needs help.