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Somebody help me understand the appeal of the bay area. What is the relative weight of 1. proximity to other tech companies (good for employees switching jobs)
by majos 7y ago
Somebody help me understand the appeal of the bay area. What is the relative weight of
1. proximity to other tech companies (good for employees switching jobs)
2. proximity to venture capital (good for entrepreneurs)
3. general culture of tech work
4. general culture, food, weather?
4 seems to pale in comparison to the cost and quality of life issues I have read about (super expensive, dirty, bad transport).
2 seems plausible. But are in-person meetings so necessary and hard to set up outside the area (also, how many people there just want to be employees somewhere and don’t care about VCs?).
3 is pretty nebulous. And again I wouldn’t expect this to be a big factor for people who mostly just want to work somewhere and not build their own thing.
I’m left with 1. Is that it?
It just seems weird that company location appears optimized for founders (we should go where the action and investment money and talent is!) and not the enormous mass of people who would just be clocking into their jobs and making those companies run. I have no data on this, but it looks like those masses of lower-level employees might prefer to live somewhere more “sensible”.
It looks like such an...inefficiency.
- mwilcox 7y agodating probably
- migueltyson 7y agoDating in SF is not great for dudes.
- hadiz 7y agoHmm, I think if you're good/bad at dating, you'd be like that anywhere. As in, big cities generally aren't great in dating for dudes.
- ericd 7y agoIIRC someone did a study that concluded that there's a large single-person gender imbalance, way more single guys than ladies in SF, and the opposite imbalance in NYC. Unsure if it's credible.
- masonic 7y agoIt's always been that way in SV, but SF used to be considered challenging for straight women. Mary Steenburgen's character in "Time After Time" comments on it.
- corysama 7y agoIt’s not just optimized for founders. The investment-employment concentration is a feedback loop that has been running for decades. Investment stays here because there is such an established concentration of talent. VCs talk about wanting to tap into the global talent pool. But, remote/distributed development is still a penalty vs everyone on the same floor. And, there are no comparable concentrations elsewhere. The Bay Area is expensive. But, if you have a tech job, the pay balances out easily. Sometimes excessively. There is tons of interesting tech work in the Bay. Not just pay the bills and go home work. But, work that is fascinating in itself. If you can’t find fascinating work here, maybe your interest in tech is limited to the paycheck. That’s totally respectable. But, you’d probably be happier some place more family friendly, or with mountains, or with a culture less focused on work -even if your bank account won’t grow as fast. The arts culture has fallen off recently as rents have risen and the drug/homeless epidemic has really picked up in the past two years. But, it’s SF is still a beautiful city full of wonderful things. And, a lot of (mostly dog) poop.
- shuckles 7y agoFor what it’s worth, many of the region’s problems are not unique to it and are instead shared by any prosperous economic region in the USA. Land use, infrastructure, ineffective bureaucracy, urban place making, etc are countrywide issues that need resolution, and in some ways the Bay Area is leading that reform. I hope to see Prop 13 repealed or greatly weakened before I die.
- pasttense01 7y agoOn the other hand the tech industry should be much better able to handle telecommuting than all other industries--so tech workers should be able to telecommute from anywhere which has decent internet.
- shuckles 7y agoStart by observing that Sun, Google, HP, Apple, PayPal, VMware, Cisco, Netflix, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other huge companies were founded by affiliates of a single university located in that region. What could be so special about the place, indeed.