8 ms·

> If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. <snark ratio="0.5">My advice would be to make sure you could find a place to live there first</sn

> If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. <snark ratio="0.5">My advice would be to make sure you could find a place to live there first</snark>

argonaut 13y ago
Are you from SV? There are plenty of affordable places to live in SV. Just because everyone is talking about how SF is sooo expensive, does not mean you can't live in Berkeley/Oakland/East Palo Alto/other areas.
- unohoo 13y ago
  east palo alto ? are. you. serious ?
  - robertkrahn01 13y ago
    East Palo Alto Struggles to Remain Affordable for Low-Income Residents [http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201401171000 http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201401171000]
  - krakensden 13y ago
    It's not 1995 anymore.
- khuey 13y ago
  Commuting from Berkeley/Oakland to SV is not fun.
- snappy173 13y ago
  SV != SF. East Bay -> SF, especially near BART is easy enough. East Bay -> SV is ... may as well be Portland ... Maine.
  - tsunamifury 13y ago
    I do it every day.
    - textminer 13y ago
      Me too. Forty minute drive from Oakland to Menlo Park.
      - sillysaurus2 13y ago
        I would be troubled by the thought of spending 80 minutes each day trapped in a steel cage. That's 400 minutes per week, or about 300 hours per year just sitting in traffic. Even if SV were the best place to be an engineer, it's hard to imagine it being worth sacrificing 300 hours per year. A 10 minute commute is 25% of that, which is 75 hours per year, which is still a lot. But for me, there is a huge psychological difference between a 10 minute commute vs 40. Is it worth it? What are the benefits?
        bcbrown 13y ago
        I've done a not-quite-so-bad commute, Seattle to Redmond, only 20-40 minutes on the way to work, 50-70 minutes on the way home. I found it soul-crushing. Most of the wait on the way home was in the line to get on the freeway. I became a worse person, unwilling to let other cars merge in, always assuming the worst of other drivers. Currently I have a 20 minute pleasant bus commute to work, and I wouldn't go back to that commute. For me, it wasn't worth it.
        xxpor 13y ago
        You drove from Seattle to Redmond? Why would you do that to yourself. (Assuming you're talking about MS) why wouldn't you take the 545/542/Connector?
        ufmace 13y ago
        Cutting commutes up into hours per year doesn't seem all that useful. Lots of stuff takes up what sounds like ridiculous amounts of time if you look at it like that. I'd rather look at it in terms of your day. If you plan to spend 8-9ish hours actually working, and another 10 per day on sleeping, eating, shower, and other such necessities, that leaves about 5 hours of real free time. A hour and a half a day of commute time is a pretty solid cut into that. 20 minutes of commute time is hardly noticable. Personally, I'd sooner take the 10 minute commute and have that mental seperation between work time and off time than have an extra 20 minutes a day and work at home.
  - argonaut 13y ago
    SV = technology region. SV != actual valley. Just like Wall Street != actual street.
- chipotle_coyote 13y ago
  I'm from Santa Clara, and "affordable" is an extremely relative notion. Silicon Valley itself isn't much cheaper than San Francisco. Berkeley, Oakland and East Palo Alto are not in Silicon Valley. And frankly, they're not as cheap now as they were even 18 months ago. It's still possible to get a one-bedroom apartment for $1000 a month if you look around hard enough, but it's almost certainly going to be small and old. The big issue is that right now, $1200, even $1300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in this area would seem quite reasonable, even a bargain. That's banana crazypants. In Sacramento you could get a two-bedroom, one-bath place with all the amenities for under $900 a month without looking too hard. That means that if you were able to telecommute three days a week -- maybe even just two -- it would cost you less to live in Sacramento and take the Capitol Corridor train in to San Francisco on your office days than it would to live pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area. I'm not advocating that (the thought has clearly occurred to me, but I have too many friends here in SV to want to make getting to them that difficult), but I think it points to a genuine problem with the local economy. The median housing costs across the Bay Area show an implicit assumption that everybody is making Big Tech Money, but they're not -- and some areas are starting to get too expensive even for the people who are making top dollar. This just isn't a sustainable mix.
  - dperny 13y ago
    I'm a student in the Deep South, and getting out to the Bay Area is a dream of mine. Here's to hoping the price comes down in the next couple of years.
    - krakensden 13y ago
      It's not that bad if you're willing to split a house or apartment. And if you're working for BigCo, affording a place won't be hard. 100K is a lot.
    - jeremyt 13y ago
      Don't listen all the whining. When I moved to San Francisco in 2008 to work on a startup, I rented a small bedroom in a house with an immigrant couple for $450 per month. If you want to make it work, you'll make it work.
- kyleblarson 13y ago
  Yeah, they are practically laying out the red carpet for tech transplants. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/23/google-engineer-targeted-by-protesters-in-front-of-his-east-bay-home/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/23/google-engineer-...
sbilstein 13y ago
If you write code or do something meaningful in tech, the money and housing will come in SV. If you are reading hacker news, you probably are planning on doing something of the sort.

> If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. <snark ratio="0.5">My advice would be to make sure you could find a place to live there first</snark>

argonaut 13y ago

Are you from SV? There are plenty of affordable places to live in SV. Just because everyone is talking about how SF is sooo expensive, does not mean you can't live in Berkeley/Oakland/East Palo Alto/other areas.

unohoo 13y ago
east palo alto ? are. you. serious ?
- robertkrahn01 13y ago
  East Palo Alto Struggles to Remain Affordable for Low-Income Residents [http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201401171000 http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201401171000]
- krakensden 13y ago
  It's not 1995 anymore.
khuey 13y ago
Commuting from Berkeley/Oakland to SV is not fun.
snappy173 13y ago
SV != SF. East Bay -> SF, especially near BART is easy enough. East Bay -> SV is ... may as well be Portland ... Maine.
- tsunamifury 13y ago
  I do it every day.
  - textminer 13y ago
    Me too. Forty minute drive from Oakland to Menlo Park.
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      I would be troubled by the thought of spending 80 minutes each day trapped in a steel cage. That's 400 minutes per week, or about 300 hours per year just sitting in traffic. Even if SV were the best place to be an engineer, it's hard to imagine it being worth sacrificing 300 hours per year. A 10 minute commute is 25% of that, which is 75 hours per year, which is still a lot. But for me, there is a huge psychological difference between a 10 minute commute vs 40. Is it worth it? What are the benefits?
      - bcbrown 13y ago
        I've done a not-quite-so-bad commute, Seattle to Redmond, only 20-40 minutes on the way to work, 50-70 minutes on the way home. I found it soul-crushing. Most of the wait on the way home was in the line to get on the freeway. I became a worse person, unwilling to let other cars merge in, always assuming the worst of other drivers. Currently I have a 20 minute pleasant bus commute to work, and I wouldn't go back to that commute. For me, it wasn't worth it.
        xxpor 13y ago
        You drove from Seattle to Redmond? Why would you do that to yourself. (Assuming you're talking about MS) why wouldn't you take the 545/542/Connector?
      - ufmace 13y ago
        Cutting commutes up into hours per year doesn't seem all that useful. Lots of stuff takes up what sounds like ridiculous amounts of time if you look at it like that. I'd rather look at it in terms of your day. If you plan to spend 8-9ish hours actually working, and another 10 per day on sleeping, eating, shower, and other such necessities, that leaves about 5 hours of real free time. A hour and a half a day of commute time is a pretty solid cut into that. 20 minutes of commute time is hardly noticable. Personally, I'd sooner take the 10 minute commute and have that mental seperation between work time and off time than have an extra 20 minutes a day and work at home.
- argonaut 13y ago
  SV = technology region. SV != actual valley. Just like Wall Street != actual street.
chipotle_coyote 13y ago
I'm from Santa Clara, and "affordable" is an extremely relative notion. Silicon Valley itself isn't much cheaper than San Francisco. Berkeley, Oakland and East Palo Alto are not in Silicon Valley. And frankly, they're not as cheap now as they were even 18 months ago. It's still possible to get a one-bedroom apartment for $1000 a month if you look around hard enough, but it's almost certainly going to be small and old. The big issue is that right now, $1200, even $1300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in this area would seem quite reasonable, even a bargain. That's banana crazypants. In Sacramento you could get a two-bedroom, one-bath place with all the amenities for under $900 a month without looking too hard. That means that if you were able to telecommute three days a week -- maybe even just two -- it would cost you less to live in Sacramento and take the Capitol Corridor train in to San Francisco on your office days than it would to live pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area. I'm not advocating that (the thought has clearly occurred to me, but I have too many friends here in SV to want to make getting to them that difficult), but I think it points to a genuine problem with the local economy. The median housing costs across the Bay Area show an implicit assumption that everybody is making Big Tech Money, but they're not -- and some areas are starting to get too expensive even for the people who are making top dollar. This just isn't a sustainable mix.
- dperny 13y ago
  I'm a student in the Deep South, and getting out to the Bay Area is a dream of mine. Here's to hoping the price comes down in the next couple of years.
  - krakensden 13y ago
    It's not that bad if you're willing to split a house or apartment. And if you're working for BigCo, affording a place won't be hard. 100K is a lot.
  - jeremyt 13y ago
    Don't listen all the whining. When I moved to San Francisco in 2008 to work on a startup, I rented a small bedroom in a house with an immigrant couple for $450 per month. If you want to make it work, you'll make it work.
kyleblarson 13y ago
Yeah, they are practically laying out the red carpet for tech transplants. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/23/google-engineer-targeted-by-protesters-in-front-of-his-east-bay-home/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/23/google-engineer-...

sbilstein 13y ago

If you write code or do something meaningful in tech, the money and housing will come in SV. If you are reading hacker news, you probably are planning on doing something of the sort.