4 ms·

San Jose is tricky. It's not a bad place to live, but few exciting things happen here. Everybody else is, by a fact of geography, north of you. It's not all

by seiji 16y ago

San Jose is tricky. It's not a bad place to live, but few exciting things happen here. Everybody else is, by a fact of geography, north of you. It's not all bad though: Pros: 10 degrees (F) warmer than SF during the day. Available parking. Cheap(er) housing. Clean. Easy access to Cupertino, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara. Easy access to mountains and off-road trails. Hockey. Large venues for artists who don't go to Oakland or SF. Usually an older, more established company base to be hired from (though some startups (usually hardware based) have offices littered throughout the area). Cons: San Jose doesn't have the "culture" vibe of SF and to get to SF is 60 to 90 minutes by train each way (which is the only sensible way to get there during rush hour). Why aren't there more startups in San Jose? San Jose isn't central to anything. You're an endpoint -- and you aren't the exciting endpoint. Events don't come to you, you go to events. Mountain View? 30 miles round trip. SF? 80 miles round trip. Palo Alto? 35 miles round trip. It's great when you are in the "boring family life" phase of your company, but it's difficult to attract "exciting startup" phase people to the boring end of the peninsula.

grellas 16y ago
A very nice summary (I have lived in and about Silicon Valley for 42 years and can say firsthand that your description is very accurate). From a larger perspective, though, the last laugh is actually on San Francisco. Back in the day, those in the City used to laugh at the whole Peninsula and South Bay culture and used to mock San Jose in particular as "plastic city." All the while, San Francisco stagnated while the Peninsula and South Bay flourished, leaving the City as an also-ran in the development of Silicon Valley (yes, it is thriving in its own way today, but the City used to be the only place where it was really worthwhile to do business and it lost that status long, long ago and has persisted with a fixed population level since the 1970s - no absolute growth at all, while the rest of the area has exploded during the past several decades). In this sense, "boring" really won the day in the end as people moved out more and more to the sticks and set up shop there with their startups throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (only this past decade has SF seen some measure of a tech revival).

by seiji 16y ago

grellas 16y ago

A very nice summary (I have lived in and about Silicon Valley for 42 years and can say firsthand that your description is very accurate). From a larger perspective, though, the last laugh is actually on San Francisco. Back in the day, those in the City used to laugh at the whole Peninsula and South Bay culture and used to mock San Jose in particular as "plastic city." All the while, San Francisco stagnated while the Peninsula and South Bay flourished, leaving the City as an also-ran in the development of Silicon Valley (yes, it is thriving in its own way today, but the City used to be the only place where it was really worthwhile to do business and it lost that status long, long ago and has persisted with a fixed population level since the 1970s - no absolute growth at all, while the rest of the area has exploded during the past several decades). In this sense, "boring" really won the day in the end as people moved out more and more to the sticks and set up shop there with their startups throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (only this past decade has SF seen some measure of a tech revival).