> I’ve rarely seen a worksite [0] (and doubt that it is the case for any FAANG HQ job) where it was impossible to live closer than 1/2-hour one-way commute from

> I’ve rarely seen a worksite [0] (and doubt that it is the case for any FAANG HQ job) where it was impossible to live closer than 1/2-hour one-way commute from the office. If you're commuting at typical times (getting to the office somewhere between 8-9am), there aren't a whole ton of places that are 1/2 hour commute away from, say, the googleplex. The east bay can be cheaper, but anything across the Dumbarton is out because the bridge can easily take 45 minutes during commute hours on any given day. The places that are a reliable 30 minute drive on the peninsula are pretty much NW San Jose (SJC), parts of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Mountain View itself, Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. With commute traffic, Milpitas is too far east, Redwood City is too far west, and even Cupertino is too far south. "Impossible to live" is of course up to definition, but if you have kids and don't yet have FU money, you might be looking really long and hard at those houses in the east bay and wondering whether the commute is really that bad (it really, really is).