5 ms·

Silicon Valley is in the waning phase of a hype cycle, but it will come back. The movement of every 20-something tech employee to SF is unsustainable, and even

by timr 14y ago

Silicon Valley is in the waning phase of a hype cycle, but it will come back. The movement of every 20-something tech employee to SF is unsustainable, and eventually prices will rise to levels that even tech salaries can't support (they're basically already there -- $3k a month for a 1 bedroom puts your housing spend at 36% of gross pay, if you're making $100k a year). Thus, you're living with roommates in a sketchy neighborhood, getting hassled for change/cigarettes/attention every 15 feet, and stepping in poop on your way to the hour-long shuttle ride to Google. Totally worth it, right? Except that you work 10-hour days, and you don't make it back to the city until after 8pm most evenings, anyway. The "lifestyle" you're paying for mostly happens on the weekends (the ones where you're not working), and consists of meeting up with the friends that you didn't have time to find (because you're all busy paying the bills), or dating (which you can't really do, because the city has turned into a tech-fueled sausage party; the gender bias in technology really starts to suck when only nerdy male engineers can afford to live the glamorous city life.) Meanwhile, there are actually some charming neighborhoods down the peninsula, the weather down there is dramatically better, and you can have a garage (from which to build a startup, or a surfboard, or work on motorcycles, or start a band) and a dog. I predict a reversal of fortune in 3, 2, 1.... (Note that I say this as someone who currently lives in SF. It ain't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you're working all the time.)

xxpor 14y ago
Or you could just live in Seattle :) Note: I'm terribly biased.
- caniszczyk 14y ago
  or Austin... or Portland...
- timr 14y ago
  Hah. I spent seven years of my life in Seattle that I want back. The weather and the dating scene up there made me want to stab myself in the face. I will say this, though: I never thought Seattle was affordable until I moved down here.
  - rdl 14y ago
    You are saying dating in SF is better than Seattle?
    - timr 14y ago
      It depends on what you like and what you're like and how old you are. If you're a young guy, and you've got the typical grooming and lifestyle habits that would cause people to label you as a "nerd", you'll have trouble in both cities. But if you're a little more put together and/or a little older, SF is massively better. A lot of the single women here are in their 30s, and a bit more established in their lives. They're not the kind of women who find conversations about code and video games to be desirable traits in a partner. Seattle was abysmal in all dating categories. The place has a weird, backwards social vibe that makes it incredibly difficult to make friends, and every public space was at least 2-to-1 male. I went to dance classes where men had to dance with each other because there weren't enough women(!) That said, there's been a huge shift in the number of well-off, vaguely stylish, 28-35 year-old single guys living in SF in the last two years. That's going to make things harder, but I don't know if it will ever get as bad as Seattle.
      - rdl 14y ago
        SF also seems to be Mecca if you're gay, at least a certain kind of 20-35 year old gay man, too, which has a huge crossover with tech workers. I know it's been a great way to recruit at previous companies -- find the gay kid who is a developer or designer stuck in some crappy midwestern/southern town and help him relocate to San Francisco with a good job. But most of the older gay people I know later end up becoming boring and move to Walnut Creek or whatever to have a family, just like other people as they get older. Presumably NYC has the same thing going on. I've only ever really been in the dating scene in the bay area for a month or two a couple times, and ended up with girlfriends rapidly. I guess being involved in the rave/party/etc. scene, and being interested in smart/confident/etc. vs. a lot of other things = easy mode for dating? But I don't really have anything to calibrate against other than MIT.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  What timr said. I spent two years in Seattle and aside from a few great people I've befriended there, wouldn't go back for the sweetest, cushiest job in the universe. And I grew up in the Northwest. Being in New York now though, I reminisce frequently about the rent that, at the time, I thought was atrocious. Seattle has a lot going for it, very little of it appealing to a single, heterosexual male in his 20s.
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  Some of us actually enjoy the sun, you know (another reason not to live in the city, unless you love fog).
jboggan 14y ago
Exactly. Which is why I said "goodbye" to my hard-won Dolores Park apartment and set up shop in Silicon Beach. The commutes between the places you'd want to live and want to work are relatively short, there are many members of the opposite sex to carouse with or befriend, people are very friendly (because they aren't exhausted from working/commuting 12 hours a day), and the weather is fantastic. The only advantage San Francisco area has is the Giants and Yamo. Incidentally we (Factual) are hiring right now, drop me a line if you really want to hear me rant about the advantages of living and working down here.
caniszczyk 14y ago
Agreed, well written. Moving to SF from Austin for a bit (before moving back), I have no idea what people see in this place. SF weather is pretty terrible, nightlife sucks and things are overpriced.
- timr 14y ago
  There are good parts. But for me the "goodness" of a place trades-off directly with the costs. In my world, a place that's charming at $1000/month is far less charming at $3000/month. But I also won't wait in line for two hours for Sunday brunch at the hottest new hipster restaurant, so empirically, I'm probably weird. That said, I'll probably eventually move to somewhere that I can have a dog and a garage.
rdl 14y ago
Offices are cheaper in SF than transit accessible (and thus highly desirable) parts of pa/mv, by a factor of 2x or more. I'd rather just get a light industrial or detached R&D type building outside the immediate transit areas, though, where rents are more like $1-2 vs. $4-7 on Castro or University or 3 in SF. Parking solves my transit needs.
- timr 14y ago
  Yeah, offices are cheaper in SF for now....or so they say. The rates we were seeing were pretty astronomical in all of the places that startups want to go (i.e. SOMA and the Mission). But there's no way that situation is sustainable, unless SF has plans to engage in a massive office building project in the next six months. I'm with you on finding space outside the immediate transit areas, though. Even in SF, moving your office 10 minutes from BART will save you thousands of dollars a month.
  - rdl 14y ago
    SF actually has pretty decent stock of light industrial; they can just keep pushing out "dirty" industries as their leases come up, except that a lot of them actually bought their own real estate during the post-2001 dip.
    - timr 14y ago
      True, if you count the areas south of Potrero. But I can't see startups ever moving out there, if they're unwilling to move to (say), the Inner Sunset or Richmond. SOMA seems to be getting pretty full-up. A lot of the light industrial that was here a few years ago is gone, and startups are pushing into the Potrero Hill area, where nobody would even think about going a few years back. I remember how long the Zynga building sat mostly vacant, and how all of those buildings on Townsend had vacancies back in 2008. They're all full now.
- philsnow 14y ago
  "transit accessible parts of pa/mv" wat. What transit system serves Palo Alto and/or Mountain View? CalTrain is about it, and it only goes northwest from there (up the peninsula, and housing isn't any cheaper up there). Unless you were talking about VTA, but nobody takes VTA. There was a bit on (I think) a freakonomics podcast sometime in the last year saying that at current VTA ridership levels, it "costs" the environment less (in terms of carbon emissions) for a person to drive rather than taking the bus, because so few people take the bus.

by timr 14y ago

xxpor 14y ago

Or you could just live in Seattle :) Note: I'm terribly biased.

caniszczyk 14y ago
or Austin... or Portland...
timr 14y ago
Hah. I spent seven years of my life in Seattle that I want back. The weather and the dating scene up there made me want to stab myself in the face. I will say this, though: I never thought Seattle was affordable until I moved down here.
- rdl 14y ago
  You are saying dating in SF is better than Seattle?
  - timr 14y ago
    It depends on what you like and what you're like and how old you are. If you're a young guy, and you've got the typical grooming and lifestyle habits that would cause people to label you as a "nerd", you'll have trouble in both cities. But if you're a little more put together and/or a little older, SF is massively better. A lot of the single women here are in their 30s, and a bit more established in their lives. They're not the kind of women who find conversations about code and video games to be desirable traits in a partner. Seattle was abysmal in all dating categories. The place has a weird, backwards social vibe that makes it incredibly difficult to make friends, and every public space was at least 2-to-1 male. I went to dance classes where men had to dance with each other because there weren't enough women(!) That said, there's been a huge shift in the number of well-off, vaguely stylish, 28-35 year-old single guys living in SF in the last two years. That's going to make things harder, but I don't know if it will ever get as bad as Seattle.
    - rdl 14y ago
      SF also seems to be Mecca if you're gay, at least a certain kind of 20-35 year old gay man, too, which has a huge crossover with tech workers. I know it's been a great way to recruit at previous companies -- find the gay kid who is a developer or designer stuck in some crappy midwestern/southern town and help him relocate to San Francisco with a good job. But most of the older gay people I know later end up becoming boring and move to Walnut Creek or whatever to have a family, just like other people as they get older. Presumably NYC has the same thing going on. I've only ever really been in the dating scene in the bay area for a month or two a couple times, and ended up with girlfriends rapidly. I guess being involved in the rave/party/etc. scene, and being interested in smart/confident/etc. vs. a lot of other things = easy mode for dating? But I don't really have anything to calibrate against other than MIT.
potatolicious 14y ago
What timr said. I spent two years in Seattle and aside from a few great people I've befriended there, wouldn't go back for the sweetest, cushiest job in the universe. And I grew up in the Northwest. Being in New York now though, I reminisce frequently about the rent that, at the time, I thought was atrocious. Seattle has a lot going for it, very little of it appealing to a single, heterosexual male in his 20s.
jspthrowaway2 14y ago
Some of us actually enjoy the sun, you know (another reason not to live in the city, unless you love fog).

jboggan 14y ago

Exactly. Which is why I said "goodbye" to my hard-won Dolores Park apartment and set up shop in Silicon Beach. The commutes between the places you'd want to live and want to work are relatively short, there are many members of the opposite sex to carouse with or befriend, people are very friendly (because they aren't exhausted from working/commuting 12 hours a day), and the weather is fantastic. The only advantage San Francisco area has is the Giants and Yamo. Incidentally we (Factual) are hiring right now, drop me a line if you really want to hear me rant about the advantages of living and working down here.

caniszczyk 14y ago

Agreed, well written. Moving to SF from Austin for a bit (before moving back), I have no idea what people see in this place. SF weather is pretty terrible, nightlife sucks and things are overpriced.

timr 14y ago
There are good parts. But for me the "goodness" of a place trades-off directly with the costs. In my world, a place that's charming at $1000/month is far less charming at $3000/month. But I also won't wait in line for two hours for Sunday brunch at the hottest new hipster restaurant, so empirically, I'm probably weird. That said, I'll probably eventually move to somewhere that I can have a dog and a garage.

rdl 14y ago

Offices are cheaper in SF than transit accessible (and thus highly desirable) parts of pa/mv, by a factor of 2x or more. I'd rather just get a light industrial or detached R&D type building outside the immediate transit areas, though, where rents are more like $1-2 vs. $4-7 on Castro or University or 3 in SF. Parking solves my transit needs.

timr 14y ago
Yeah, offices are cheaper in SF for now....or so they say. The rates we were seeing were pretty astronomical in all of the places that startups want to go (i.e. SOMA and the Mission). But there's no way that situation is sustainable, unless SF has plans to engage in a massive office building project in the next six months. I'm with you on finding space outside the immediate transit areas, though. Even in SF, moving your office 10 minutes from BART will save you thousands of dollars a month.
- rdl 14y ago
  SF actually has pretty decent stock of light industrial; they can just keep pushing out "dirty" industries as their leases come up, except that a lot of them actually bought their own real estate during the post-2001 dip.
  - timr 14y ago
    True, if you count the areas south of Potrero. But I can't see startups ever moving out there, if they're unwilling to move to (say), the Inner Sunset or Richmond. SOMA seems to be getting pretty full-up. A lot of the light industrial that was here a few years ago is gone, and startups are pushing into the Potrero Hill area, where nobody would even think about going a few years back. I remember how long the Zynga building sat mostly vacant, and how all of those buildings on Townsend had vacancies back in 2008. They're all full now.
philsnow 14y ago
"transit accessible parts of pa/mv" wat. What transit system serves Palo Alto and/or Mountain View? CalTrain is about it, and it only goes northwest from there (up the peninsula, and housing isn't any cheaper up there). Unless you were talking about VTA, but nobody takes VTA. There was a bit on (I think) a freakonomics podcast sometime in the last year saying that at current VTA ridership levels, it "costs" the environment less (in terms of carbon emissions) for a person to drive rather than taking the bus, because so few people take the bus.