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This is why I left the Bay Area. To each their own. For me, the culture reinforced a sort of blind dedication to a company or a cause. Everyone you would meet

This is why I left the Bay Area. To each their own. For me, the culture reinforced a sort of blind dedication to a company or a cause. Everyone you would meet or talk to would want to talk tech or entrepreneurship. You could tell they were comparing themselves with you or trying to figure out a way to collaborate. Everything was about work. If you weren't hustling, someone else would out hustle you. I missed a balance in life. Visiting with friends, family, hiking, talking, enjoying the weather. In the bay, even when I did take a break and venture out to enjoy life, it felt like the world was barren. In comparison to other places I've lived, the food, the culture, art, and life were just bland outside of work. It's just a reflection of the priorities of the people living and working there. The other thing is, what better way to get return on your business investment. It's obvious that if you cultivate a culture of competitiveness, combined with dangling the carrot of prestige from working at a place that would unlikely become a unicorn, combined with scarcity of resources (expensive housing, high cost of living), you get people burning more of their precious time for the benefit of founders and investors. It's an excellent situation if you are a founder or investor. Aside from experience and skills gained, it's a tough situation if you are an individual contributor.

N1H1L 6y ago
The food in the Bay Area was bland? And there were no hiking/camping opportunities? The Bay Area definitely has some problems - but a lot of your complaints are untethered from reality.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > The food in the Bay Area was bland? Yes. The Bay Area has an awful restaurant scene - overpriced and not very good (unless you're talking about $$$ places). It's just one disappointment after another. The high cost of living precludes any of the quality workers from being employed at moderate-cost eateries.
  - agitator 6y ago
    Yeah, another huge factor for me was just how unhappy all of the service workers were. But I don't blame them. There's no way they could afford to live within what you or I would call a reasonable commute. So they would trek daily to provide for people making orders of magnitude more money. And the ones who were wiling to accept that kind of torture, were the ones who couldn't get jobs anywhere else more reasonable.
- agitator 6y ago
  The food scene is definitely overhyped. Maybe if you are coming from the midwest it's impressive, but for me it was repeatedly a huge let down. There is plenty of hiking and skiing nearby but the point I was trying to make is that it was tough to break away both from work and from people who loved to talk about work.
  - wbronitsky 6y ago
    Living in the Bay Area, I find the food scene amazing. I do, however, find the food scene in San Francisco bland and repetitive. The same pattern holds for cultural activities and the outdoors; SF has the same things over and over again, while the Bay Area as a whole has an abundance of options to fill your life with. I have also found that many people who move to San Francisco spend 99%+ of their time in SF. I do agree with your sentiments about what a large amount of people in the Bay Area want to spend their time thinking and talking about. I stopped going to parties years ago after I couldn’t find a conversation that wasn’t about how this dude worked at Apple.
president 6y ago
I feel the same way and part of this is the fact that I think the demographics of tech has changed. When I first entered SV around ~2006, I used to work with plenty of people who actually were interested in technology and were generally decent people. Fast forward today, everyone I work with are just savage try-hards who care only about money and fast advancement through the corporate ladder and they outcompete others using politics, backstabbing, and time. I think tech has just become a magnet for people trying to make $$$. Or maybe I'm just working at the wrong companies these days.

N1H1L 6y ago

The food in the Bay Area was bland? And there were no hiking/camping opportunities? The Bay Area definitely has some problems - but a lot of your complaints are untethered from reality.

triceratops 6y ago
> The food in the Bay Area was bland? Yes. The Bay Area has an awful restaurant scene - overpriced and not very good (unless you're talking about $$$ places). It's just one disappointment after another. The high cost of living precludes any of the quality workers from being employed at moderate-cost eateries.
- agitator 6y ago
  Yeah, another huge factor for me was just how unhappy all of the service workers were. But I don't blame them. There's no way they could afford to live within what you or I would call a reasonable commute. So they would trek daily to provide for people making orders of magnitude more money. And the ones who were wiling to accept that kind of torture, were the ones who couldn't get jobs anywhere else more reasonable.
agitator 6y ago
The food scene is definitely overhyped. Maybe if you are coming from the midwest it's impressive, but for me it was repeatedly a huge let down. There is plenty of hiking and skiing nearby but the point I was trying to make is that it was tough to break away both from work and from people who loved to talk about work.
- wbronitsky 6y ago
  Living in the Bay Area, I find the food scene amazing. I do, however, find the food scene in San Francisco bland and repetitive. The same pattern holds for cultural activities and the outdoors; SF has the same things over and over again, while the Bay Area as a whole has an abundance of options to fill your life with. I have also found that many people who move to San Francisco spend 99%+ of their time in SF. I do agree with your sentiments about what a large amount of people in the Bay Area want to spend their time thinking and talking about. I stopped going to parties years ago after I couldn’t find a conversation that wasn’t about how this dude worked at Apple.

president 6y ago

I feel the same way and part of this is the fact that I think the demographics of tech has changed. When I first entered SV around ~2006, I used to work with plenty of people who actually were interested in technology and were generally decent people. Fast forward today, everyone I work with are just savage try-hards who care only about money and fast advancement through the corporate ladder and they outcompete others using politics, backstabbing, and time. I think tech has just become a magnet for people trying to make $$$. Or maybe I'm just working at the wrong companies these days.