6 ms·

San Francisco is not silicon valley. Culturally, silicon valley is dramatically different from San Francisco; almost everyone who has experienced both has a st

• delecti 10y ago
  As far as I can tell, SF is in SV. To someone who has never been/worked there, everything I've read makes it seem like "Silicon Valley" is often used interchangeably with the Bay Area in general (though Wikipedia seems to specify that SV refers to the southern bay area in particular).
  • jtmcmc 10y ago
    Silicon Valley has a pretty drastically different feel from San Francisco at both an industry level (lots of large companies there vs. largely smaller startups in SF) and culturally (San Jose is a largely suburban community while SF is an urban center).
  • Apocryphon 10y ago
    SF is in SV insofar sometime between the inception of the dot-com bubble and the great recession it became the place for many, many tech startups to relocate to. But culturally there's still a difference between the two.
  • rst 10y ago
    Geographically, Silicon Valley is about an hour south of San Francisco proper on highways, depending on traffic. The concentration of tech startups there was seeded by Stanford University (in Palo Alto), and by a lot of defense contractors who had facilities in the area. Many workers commuted from San Francisco because they preferred to live in the city (most of the Valley is very bland suburbia); companies started actually locating in the city maybe ten or fifteen years ago.
    • mirsadm 10y ago
      That was the most surprising thing for me when I went to check out the Silicon Valley area a couple of years ago. I have no idea why so many people choose to work there. It looks like suburbia mixed in with a bit of industrial wasteland. I really enjoyed San Francisco but the commute must be hell every morning if you choose to live there.
      • hkmurakami 10y ago
        It's really just a matter of preference. Some people like the density and excitement of cities, while others like the space and privacy of sprawl. They both have advantages and disadvantages. As for myself, I tried living in SF for a few years and was convinced that the appeal of city life just did not resonate with me; however many good friends could not do without the amenities and convenience that the city offers. We all just pick what is best for us given who we are and what we value for ourselves.
      • nostrademons 10y ago
        You choose to work in SV because you get a job at a SV company doing things that you're interested in, or you're accepted at Stanford. That's basically it. The first wave of migrants came for transistors (Shockley/Fairchild/Intel), ballistic missiles (Lockheed), or nuclear weapons (Lawrence Livermore). The next wave came for personal computers (Apple etc.), workstations (SGI, Sun, Xerox PARC, Western Digital), databases (Postgres, Oracle), or networking (Cisco). The wave after that was all Internet, and then mobile, and now it's started to branch out again. If you're not working on something that is currently hot in Silicon Valley, there is little reason to be here. It's not like Portland, where you decide that you want to live there first and then decide what you'll do for a living. But if you do want to work in one of those hot sectors, there really is no place to do so other than Silicon Valley; nowhere else do you get the same combination of talent, capital, experience, open-mindedness, and risk-taking. It doesn't surprise me that people are moving out (even beyond personal experience, where basically all of my friends have remarked that they're considering moving to Colorado, or Seattle, or Portland, or North Carolina, and my wife & I are considering it too). We're at the end of a technology cycle, so nobody really knows what the next one will be or if it's something that'll interest them. But there are a lot of fascinating things going on with drones, robotics, self-driving cars, AI, satellites, and hardware, so if any of them seem interesting, Silicon Valley might be a good place to check out.
  • gumby 10y ago
    > As far as I can tell, SF is in SV. To someone who has never been/worked there.. Which is most reporters. They get sent out to Silicon Valley, land at the SF airport, and of course go to San Francisco. There's little to see in the valley, while SF has great views and also (recently -- last 15 or so years) companies to visit. Reporters with deep roots here (e.g. Markoff, who grew up in Palo Alto and lives in SF) write about the difference, but if the Bay Area is a foreign place to you, the distinction is invisible. It reminds me of a cabby I had in Berlin: "Oh, you're flying to the USA? I know it very well -- I've been to Miami four times!" Most coarsely, SV is more tech heavy, SF much less so. There are many exceptions of course.
  • ericHosick 10y ago
    SV seems to have migrated a bit North. At one time, Scotts Valley (other side of Highway 17) was considered part of Silicon Valley (Borland and Seagate).
    • Apocryphon 10y ago
      Wonder if tech will return to Santa Cruz in huge numbers. Silicon Beach North!
      • lsc 10y ago
        I would take a 20% pay cut if it made that happen.
  • DiNovi 10y ago
    the bay area is being absorbed into it, but SV is like, disney world 'burbs.
  • anjneymidha 10y ago
    "SV is a state of mind". Only semi-joking.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• santaclaus 10y ago
  I hear people refer to Oakland as being in Silicon Valley...
  • ibarea 10y ago
    As a native, I would say that Silicon Valley used to mean the area south of SF and around Stanford which includes the headquarters of Google and Facebook - but as tech has expanded North all the way into Oakland and SF it increasingly means everything.
    • Apocryphon 10y ago
      Sometimes I joke it's only a matter of time before there are startups in Richmond and Vallejo property prices start rising.
      • hkmurakami 10y ago
        Considering that decades ago we wouldn't have thought that Fremont would have the property prices they do now, I don't think that's unfathomable.
• Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > almost everyone who has experienced both has a strong opinion about which one they prefer That's an excellent point.
• draw_down 10y ago
  Ay yi yi. Maybe we could give this point a rest, y'all.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • lsc 10y ago
    It is important, I think, for outsiders to understand. The sort of person who is happy in San Francisco might not be happy in silicon valley, and the person who is happy in silicon valley might not be happy in San Francisco. In fact, I suspect most people that are happy in one would not be happy in the other. This isn't to say one is better than the other, but one is almost certainly better than the other for you.
• seppin 10y ago
  no cheek, who on earth would prefer the south bay to SF?
  • CharlesW 10y ago
    As a Chicago-to-SV transplant for whom Silicon Valley was mecca, SF often felt lightweight, almost like a parody or cargo-cult version of what companies in Silicon Valley were doing. I realize that that's not fair, but not more unfair than imagining that SF's culture is objectively better.
    • nunb 10y ago
      A very apt description. Cargo-cult is right.
  • lsc 10y ago
    Now I've spent decades in silicon valley; I've interviewed a lot in San Francisco, and I've gone to SF for the 'better' nightlife, and I think that the cultural differences are dramatic there, too. When I interview in San Francisco? I'm often the oldest technical individual contributor, and I'm often the fattest person in the building. I also am the least stylish. I'm 35 or so, and have BMI in the neighborhood of 30; I mean, I'm fat, no argument, and I don't put much effort into dressing, but in Silicon Valley? I am pretty normal on all of those axis. My experience with the nightlife is similar. I mean, well, most of SF still makes me feel fat, socially and stylistically awkward and slightly foreign. Most of the time when I go out in SF, I get the stink-eye for not knowing how, or not putting in the effort to figure out how to dress myself properly. When I go out in silicon valley? I see other people in free t shirts still wearing work badges. Everyone treats me well, as long as I make a basic effort towards politeness. Nobody expects me to be stylistically or socially skilled, as long as I put out that basic effort. I go to my favorite bar, and not only are there no tv screens, I am not the only one reading. Essentially, silicon valley is for people like me. This is both why people like me like it, and also why people in San Francisco look down on it.
    • nunb 10y ago
• tryitnow 10y ago
  There's an important distinction here: tech culture versus local culture. The tech cultures of SF and the Peninsula/South Bay have more or less merged. The local cultures are very, very different. I think in the context of business, it's safe to say that SF is in Silicon Valley, culturally speaking.
  • lsc 10y ago
    My experience is way different. Technical individual contributors in San Francisco are expected to be way younger and expected to be way more stylish than the expectations in silicon valley proper. At least that is the impression I get at nearly every interview I go to up north. My experience is that if I interview up north, I get rejected on cultural fit grounds. If I interview south of San Carlos, if I get rejected, it is because I did not do well enough on the technical portion of the interview. Just my experience, your mileage may vary.
• acchow 10y ago
  This is correct. They have dramatically different cultures and attract drastically different personalities.
• dredmorbius 10y ago
  "As more high-tech companies were established across the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area's two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the "Silicon Valley" name eventually came to refer to all high-tech businesses in the region. The term is now generally used as a synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector. The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similar named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with a comparable structure all around the world." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley