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I’m bailing on San Francisco
- YuriNiyazov 12y agoThe author works all the time, and thinks that by moving to New York, of all places, he will achieve a greater work-life balance. Having lived in both places and having struggles with the same issues: the work-life balance in both places is heavily skewed towards work, and in those places, that balance is heavily dependent on the person's ability to say "no" and to stand up for oneself. If the author had said "I am moving to a sleepy suburb in the midwest", then I'd say he's making a good choice that will require very few changes in his own ability to manage his life: the environment would impose. As is, he's just switching one high-pressure area for another. Edit: apparently work/life balance isn't the issue, as the essay and comments here clarified. Very well.
- knowtheory 12y agoLet me offer you an alternative hypothesis. Steve remains at work, rather than being pulled to other alluring things, because he he finds SF so draining and obnoxious. A change of scenery can definitely help with that sort of problem. Having talked to Steve over a range of diverse topics I can tell you, Steve has many interests outside of work and in many other contexts has obviously maintained a work/life balance that has allowed him to do many interesting things both professionally and personally.
- rhizome 12y agoSteve remains at work, rather than being pulled to other alluring things, because he he finds SF so draining and obnoxious. Maybe I'm self-centered, but I just can't imagine the macro outweighing the "alluring things" to their exclusion. Certainly, though, SF needs to deal with homelessness 3000% better than they have in decades, and options for the mentally ill remain a national shame and failure.
- patrickyeon 12y agoExcept he says specifically that working too much is not the problem: I don’t go home late. I go home at five. It’s not work/life balance that’s the issue. I’m just not psyched for the ‘life’ part.
- steveklabnik 12y agoTo be fair to your parent, I edited that in a few minutes ago because people read the previous sentence differently than I meant it. I didn't know people would assume I was burning the candle from both ends.
- knowtheory 12y agoYep, i think that part was a clarification added after the bulletin was posted to HN.
- digita88 12y agoI know what it's like to move out of a 'vortex', sometimes you just have to do it. Don't listen to the naysayers! Good luck and do whatever it takes to get the SF FOMO out of the system.
- joelrunyon 12y agoI was expecting it to be about getting outside the echo chamber of the valley, but it sounds like he just needed a change of pace.
- steveklabnik 12y agoGetting out of the echo chamber is _definitely_ part of it.
- michaelochurch 12y agoWhat do you think about Seattle, Austin, Boulder? I lived in New York for 7 years. It's a really hard place to live. It gives a lot, and the benefits are immense, but the cramped living spaces, crowds, and fast pace are difficult. (For some, the climate's also hard. I got "Building SAD" when I lived downtown, but other than that, the climate wasn't an issue.) Of course, no one can predict how you'll react to it. My guess is that you'll probably find NYC challenging but enjoy what it has to offer (much more than SF; it's a real fucking city, not some colony for East Coast banking/consulting rejects turned VCs and the 25-year-old nerds they boss around). It's worth trying out, for sure. But I wouldn't expect it to be an easy place to live.
- steveklabnik 12y agoI have never visited Seattle. I've spent probably a few weeks total in Austin and a month or two in Boulder, and I like Austin, but it's damn hot. One of the reasons I quit my _last_ job is that I would have had to live in Denver, and I didn't want to. I don't think Denver/Boulder is bad, I just don't think it's great either. I wouldn't complain about living there, but given the choice, would pick other places. I've spent a lot of time in NYC, so I know what I'm getting into. It's fun to watch all these people make assumptions about my opinions and what they're based on.
- Serow225 12y agoWhat about Boston?
- nutjob2 12y agoSeeya! How is it SF's fault that you can't take a break? Instead of changing things, you whine then leave. Yeah! That'll change the "SF work culture"! Personally, I just went outside for the first time in two or three weeks. There are just more interesting things inside than out. I everything I need delivered or transmitted over the internet, including friends.
- knowtheory 12y agoAnd clearly your life will never change and you are certain to always feel like this. As a post script: it's also worth noting that this was merely a bulletin that Steve was departing, not a manifesto about work-life balance (which you'll note is not the reason he's citing for leaving SF).
- spacecadet 12y agosick sad life.
- gkoberger 12y agoFor those of you disappointed by this article and want a great article about leaving SF, try this: http://needwant.com/p/im-moving-san-francisco-st-louis/ http://needwant.com/p/im-moving-san-francisco-st-louis/
- ihaveqvestion 12y agoI hadn't previously read a description of St Louis quite like that - he makes it sound very appealing. Does anyone else have personal experience with living in St Louis?
- aet 12y agoNo personal experience, but I know East St. Louis is regarded as one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S.
- rrouse 12y agoI live in St. Louis. We have a growing tech scene. Some of my friends refer to St. Louis's tech as the "Silicon Ghetto" as it's not quite as expansive as SF. More businesses are moving and starting up here because of Arch Grants and one of the co-founders of Square has a startup accelerator here as well. Granted, I don't work for a company in St. Louis. I actually work remotely for a company based out of San Fran.
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- thrush 12y agoI'd be curious to understand the parts of his day that take the most time, and how that could change in NY. Commuting and shopping are two huge time sinks that living in NY could fix.
- steveklabnik 12y agoCommute is a huge deal: I ride the 38 for ~90 minutes a day, in total. Also, to be effective at my job, I needed to be there during the 9-5, M-F period. I don't plan on getting myself into another 'real job' soon.
- ctoshok 12y agooh god, the 38. a bike would have been helpful, though I can definitely relate to commute angst.
- thrush 12y agoDo you mean M-F period?
- steveklabnik 12y agoYes, thanks. Fixed.
- AceJohnny2 12y ago> So, at the end of the month, I’m leaving Balanced and the city. I’ll be arriving in Brooklyn [...] > Every hour I spend in New York, I feel excited, and every hour I spend in San Francisco, I feel drained. To each his own, and from the looks of the comments here, he seems to be in the minority.
- coldtea 12y agoMost majorities started as minorities too, so that doesn't say much.
- jnks 12y ago"Grass is greener" isn't a cliche for nothing. Seems like the author is making a classic mistake assuming different will be better. The main argument here seems that he enjoys taking vacations in NYC, not that there's anything there that will improve his daily life.
- delackner 12y agoThat is a lazy retort to make against someone who has listed specific grievances with a specific place. If you are thinking of moving someplace different but cannot think of anything specific wrong with the current place, yes that is a classic grass is greener mistake. But having lived in several places, each one has drastically different positive and negative attributes, as with any relationship. You wouldn't tell someone to stick with a partner who was beligerent when any number of other people could easily fit the bill, but somehow people talk as if a cty is totally interchangeable with another. That may be true with some specific options that share the same negative and positive qualities. It is not generally true.
- dagw 12y agoDon't underestimate the power of a simple change of scenery. I moved from one city to a, on paper, basically identical city (same size, same climate, same 'feel' etc.). The place I moved to was in no way better (or worse) than the place I left, but the change it had on my life was huge. Sometimes you just need a fresh start.
- matt__rose 12y agoSF can suck you in, but there are loads of people in SF that have nothing to do with Tech at all. When I lived there my friends included a guy who worked on the Bay Bridge, a Hotel Manager, a financial advisor, a set designer, and a couple of musicians. The only tech people I talked to were at work. Those people are easy to find if you look.
- cwilson 12y agoMy girlfriend and I (both in tech) have also left San Francisco as of last month, but for slightly different (but related) reasons. The 75,000 mentioned people who have moved to the bay area for tech have caused rent to rise by such a large amount, that even though we can afford to pay, it feels like a huge waste of our money. We could be spending it doing other things or just saving for our future. Instead we'll continue to work in tech doing consulting work, but we're going try our hand at being completely nomadic while doing it (starting with Central and South America, though we'll be picking a place and staying there for a few weeks to a month at minimum). We've sold pretty much everything we own and have whittled down our belongings to a large backpack and daypack each. It feels pretty amazing to be this lightweight and mobile, and our current budget has spending about 3x less than we were while living in SF (and still living very well).
- jseliger 12y agoThe 75,000 mentioned people who have moved to the bay area for tech have caused rent to rise by such a large amount, that even though we can afford to pay, it feels like a huge waste of our money This is also primarily a political problem, as I wrote previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7382097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7382097 and as Kim-Mai Cutler cogently described here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ . Seattle has somewhat similar problems (http://www.smartgrowthseattle.org/sally-bagshaw-yesterday-tomorrow/ http://www.smartgrowthseattle.org/sally-bagshaw-yesterday-to...), but they're not nearly as bad.
- cwilson 12y agoAgreed, both great pieces on the problems in SF at the moment, and I definitely didn't mean to discount those details as part of our reasoning for leaving. I love San Francisco and really all of Northern California, but we're getting out of dodge before things get really out of hand. I do hope to be able to return some day.
- smoe 12y agoI'm currently doing the same. Left Switzerland about one month ago, and I'm now working from Colombia. Not that I couldn't afford living in Switzerland, but among other reasons, I felt like I didn't get enough value for my money there. Also, I love traveling, but as a freelancer it would have been kinda hard to just do that for a longer period of time. So I decided to combine the both. I too felt amazing after quitting my apartment and getting rid of all the stuff. Now everything I own, fits in my backpack. Except my books, which are with my sister:)
- steveklabnik 12y agoHey all, I mean, I already wrote the post, but what I will say is that I've spent a ton of time in New York, and I know exactly what I'm getting into. For example, the bustling environment will actually _invigorate_, not drain, me, because that's the kind of place I enjoy. I'll also be saving money on rent, get to enjoy the wonderful subway, and a whole host of other things. There's also quite a lot of value in _being_ in San Francisco. If I was going to start a company, I wouldn't bother with anywhere else. But I'm not starting a company. So it's not for me. This post isn't titled "You should bail on San Francisco."
- jonny_eh 12y agoPeople can get defensive of their own life decisions when they hear that other people make different ones. There's no harm in trying to live in different places. Sometimes you don't know what city is your home until you live there a while. And maybe you find that you're only happy when you don't settle in one place too long. Everyone is different.
- taternuts 12y agoI've never heard of anyone moving to NYC to save on rent, ever. Amazing that it's actually possible coming from San Francisco... as someone considering the SF area (from DC) it's a little frightening. Seems as if $100k is almost bare-minimum to live humbly in SF
- steveklabnik 12y agoI originally lived in the Mission, and then moved to Inner Richmond because the rent was cheaper. Brooklyn is cheaper yet, at least for me, by $250/month. And that's comparing my share for a two bedroom (BK is a little smaller, admittedly) in Bushwick vs. Inner Richmond. The 2BRs I was looking at in the Mission are ~$1100/month total more expensive than Inner Richmond. I also could be really bad at looking. I don't have hard numbers, just what I found.
- notlisted 12y agoHope you find in Brooklyn what you need/desire. It's become a place for young, single people, not families. We left NYC last year after 16+ years (the last 12 spent in BK) and crossed the water. I resisted a move for many years because of the energy you cite, which I considered my lifeblood, but I've never felt better now that I'm surrounded by trees again. NYC (BK) really sucked the life out of me (and my wallet) and I didn't notice until I made my escape. BK real estate has become unaffordable and the buying process is atrocious (expect to fall in love with an apt. multiple times only to be outbid by cash offers). BK rents are going through the roof. Despite what my friends who still live there assume, I don't miss it at all.
- deadfall 12y agoI know a handful of developers that moved to New York. Seems to me that New York is where the developers go when they are tired of SF. I am thinking Denver or Chattanooga, where I could actually afford to buy a house and a yard. Edit: I have been in SF for 3 and a half years. It was only suppose to be 2 years to get my career started. I feel the black hole pulling and next thing I know it will be 10 years.
- rdl 12y agoI hate San Francisco (and NYC and DC, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the non-SF SFBA cities). Unfortunately, it really is the best place for tech company employment, at least in a 15-500 person company. You need to have enough companies in a given area to make it possible to switch jobs without relocating, and I just don't see that anywhere else (NYC for non-core-tech tech-using companies, and DC for gov contracting). Peninsula is losing out to SF itself for a lot of companies, too. For a startup, having service providers in an area is important, but investors are more important, and remain reluctant to do anything remote to themselves.
- michaelochurch 12y agoI hate San Francisco (and NYC and DC, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the non-SF SFBA cities). What places do you like?
- rdl 12y agoFirst choice: HK or Singapore. Within the Bay Area: Santa Clara, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside, Los Altos, Cupertino, and most of San Mateo County overall. Otherwise: Seattle, Berlin, non-Berlin Germany, Portland (OR), Montreal, sort of Toronto, Amsterdam, .... Probably Texas, but I've never actually been there. For some period of time 1-4y: Japan, Qatar, China, Indonesia, Las Vegas, Utah, Montana, ND/SD, etc. In the Northeast, NH or VT. Most of these don't really have enough diversity of tech companies to be viable for me, or a good enough ecosystem to start companies. (SV excepted; Seattle is borderline. HK/SIN don't do much in the kind of companies I like)
- 3pt14159 12y agoWhy "sort of Toronto"?
- rdl 12y agoIt has the high density/high cost thing I dislike, and shitty weather. But has a lot of smart people, sane immigration policy, etc. (I would probably ignore a Toronto if it were in the US and otherwise the same, but Canada is a win for a lot of things.) I guess Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Czech Republic, etc. go on the "potentially good" list, too. The things I hate about SF are really threefold: 1) I've spent "enough" time here to be bored with it, at least outside work related things. It's genuinely not a world-class city (outside of tech, and food) -- LA, NY, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc have it beat) 2) Absurd costs due mostly to demand and somewhat due to government policies -- this has been well covered. It essentially means you must always be working in tech, unless you've had a huge exit, unless you moved here sufficiently long ago or accept a sufficiently low quality of life. 3) Aside from costs, crazy government and social policies. I can get that people disagree on political issues, but SF (and CA as a whole) are just badly governed -- they collect taxes like a high-services-returned socialist state, but provide services like a low-tax state. There are a bunch of structural reasons this is unlikely to change, so it's not really worth investing any effort in CA politics. I'd actually prefer living in a place which is at the current time more fucked (say, TX, TN, KY, Indonesia; whatever), but where there's enough of a desire to fix things that the trend is positive. Or where the people are actually pretty sane and reasonable overall (Seattle; many of the Northern European countries).
- piratebroadcast 12y agoThis thread is hilarious. People insulting Steve for wanting to leave SF and yet every other article TODAY on the FRONT PAGE is "Why is SF public transit so shitty?" or "Why is SF so expensive?" Get out of here.
- mkrecny 12y agoWhy did this post disappear from the front page?
- dang 12y agoA moderator tagged it as unsubstantive.
- danjaouen 12y agoLiving outside of the Bay Area has consequences as well. For example, I'm an out-of-work developer currently living outside of SF, and I can therefore only really apply to positions that allow for remote work (which are much rarer than HN would have you believe).
- kumarm 12y agoSome of the Pages on the author's domain are blocked on Chrome (Chrome Detected Malware). Be careful if you are not using a secure browser.
- steveklabnik 12y agoWeird. Can you tell me which ones? That seems unusual.