I realize I wasn't being very nice, and I apologize for that. I'm quite sure there are plenty of very smart people who live in the bay area and do great work.

I realize I wasn't being very nice, and I apologize for that. I'm quite sure there are plenty of very smart people who live in the bay area and do great work. With such a high concentration of engineers it makes sense plenty will suck, too. My experience is biased, of course. My company has offices all over the country and a couple years ago opened a new office in SF, and I'm 93.4% sure we don't exactly pay FAANG-competitive salaries there, which affects the quality of who we can recruit there. It's kinda like how we hire engineers in Hyderabad for 1/5 the US rate and then wonder why we more often than not get substandard performance.