4 ms·

This is an echo of my thoughts, as a 29yo. I grew up in a podunk Middle Eastern "city" (it was the national capital, but...) which can be geographically approxi

This is an echo of my thoughts, as a 29yo. I grew up in a podunk Middle Eastern "city" (it was the national capital, but...) which can be geographically approximated by an american suburb lining a single, not-so-important highway. I realized I loved the city (for exactly the reasons you mentioned) only when I spent a month in the countryside of Thailand after 2 years of SF. I then spent a considerable time in the major East Asian metropolises, before returning here to rejoin my cofounders. I am far happier than I would be in any non-metropolis, but I can't stop thinking of all the ways SF is just subpar in all the things that make a city great except for interesting conversations with intelligent people, pro-entrepreneurial vibe (minus the VC/fundraising noise), and technical prowess. Being near my cofounders is invaluable and my heart may be in SF for being the first metropolis I got a chance to get attached to, but I am eagerly looking for a way to live 9 months of the year in a more functional metropolis like NYC, and come here on workations while crashing with friends.

osdiab 8y ago
Yep I think we see eye to eye on all of that. With a clarification that SF is great in particular for having professional, tech- or entrepreneurial-focused conversations, but that social scene is pretty weak otherwise. I've found that, except with those close to me, my conversations in the Bay Area very quickly transform into talking about what you're working on or what credentials you have. People here generally don't seem to want to talk about much else, whereas my experience chatting up strangers in Tokyo and Shanghai is that people actively avoid talking about their work, and my friends in Bangalore compare the social scene there vs SF like night and day. And as far as I can tell a lot of my friends have the same thoughts—it's not just Bay Area natives who can't afford the cost of living who leave the Bay Area for greener pastures, but also tons of disillusioned techies themselves—so the people deriding Californians in this article might rightfully complain about that group. Thankfully being in software provides a benefit inaccessible to most—the flexibility to work remote. So I think that lifestyle is definitely doable, and I intend to make it happen one way or another.
- keerthiko 8y ago
  Yeah agreed on all counts. Most other metropolises have more diverse social interaction value propositions than SF, which is mostly technical, ideological or entrepreneurial, with a strong tendency to become circlejerking. On a related note, I am very interested in facilitating a location-independent lifestyle for those with the flexibility to work remote. I have spent a long time researching logistics, and I really want to orchestrate a system where two people each pay the average of rent between two cities, and coordinate trading places a few times a year. Feel free to DM (contact in profile) if you're interested in talking more about this!

osdiab 8y ago

Yep I think we see eye to eye on all of that. With a clarification that SF is great in particular for having professional, tech- or entrepreneurial-focused conversations, but that social scene is pretty weak otherwise. I've found that, except with those close to me, my conversations in the Bay Area very quickly transform into talking about what you're working on or what credentials you have. People here generally don't seem to want to talk about much else, whereas my experience chatting up strangers in Tokyo and Shanghai is that people actively avoid talking about their work, and my friends in Bangalore compare the social scene there vs SF like night and day. And as far as I can tell a lot of my friends have the same thoughts—it's not just Bay Area natives who can't afford the cost of living who leave the Bay Area for greener pastures, but also tons of disillusioned techies themselves—so the people deriding Californians in this article might rightfully complain about that group. Thankfully being in software provides a benefit inaccessible to most—the flexibility to work remote. So I think that lifestyle is definitely doable, and I intend to make it happen one way or another.

keerthiko 8y ago
Yeah agreed on all counts. Most other metropolises have more diverse social interaction value propositions than SF, which is mostly technical, ideological or entrepreneurial, with a strong tendency to become circlejerking. On a related note, I am very interested in facilitating a location-independent lifestyle for those with the flexibility to work remote. I have spent a long time researching logistics, and I really want to orchestrate a system where two people each pay the average of rent between two cities, and coordinate trading places a few times a year. Feel free to DM (contact in profile) if you're interested in talking more about this!