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It depends, of course. If your goal is primarily to save money so that you can retire or don't have to work or can choose when/where/how to work, you're alread

It depends, of course. If your goal is primarily to save money so that you can retire or don't have to work or can choose when/where/how to work, you're already on the right path. Economically, demand for housing in the bay area is strong enough right now that rents are rising to whatever level people can afford to pay. That means you're basically assured of having little or no surplus unless one of your ventures is wildly successful. If your goal is to develop a bigger network of people in your industry, you're probably missing out, although your client network will be very valuable to you as well. Also, not all of the people you're missing out on are people you want in your network anyway... The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. Plenty has been written about this, both serious and satirical. There are certainly people who enjoy it, but it sounds like you're fairly happy where you are, so you probably aren't one of them. If you're tired of bootstrapping and want to get funded, you'll probably have a better chance in the bay area or some other large city. Otherwise this is moot for you. Also, remember that most of "silicon valley" isn't involved in technology any more. It's become mostly a media/advertising center. There are still technology companies around, but the focus has definitely shifted. You might want to ask yourself not "am I missing out?" but rather "what would I like to change about my present circumstances?" and go from there.

ultimoo 11y ago
>> Also, remember that most of "silicon valley" isn't involved in technology any more. It's become mostly a media/advertising center. There are still technology companies around, but the focus has definitely shifted. Can you please elaborate?
- fredkbloggs 11y ago
  I think a deeper discussion of what it means to be a technology company and the focus of bay area companies would be a hijack here. But, very briefly, if you view Google and Facebook as "technology companies", we disagree. The closest analogue to Google in terms of business model is a company now called Dex but for decades known as R. H. Donnelley and Sons, which published telephone books and sold advertising in them in the form of the Yellow Pages. Facebook's best analogue is probably a reality television show production company. These companies and many of their brethren are not in the business of developing and marketing new technology. They are in the media business and any technology they happen to develop is a sideshow. It may be used internally and never shared or it may be made open source for any of a number of (usually sound) business reasons, but the development and marketing of that technology is neither the company's primary business nor a significant source of its revenue. If you don't believe me, read the 10-Ks. You are what your revenue says you are. There are many, many other examples. If you look at a random sampling of promotional posts to HN, you will see a cross-section of the entire global economy: retailers (lots of 'em), restaurants, media, manufacturing, and yes, technology. It's fair to say that a lot of people in the bay area are interested in technology, but most of their employers are properly placed in other sectors based on their business models, revenue sources, and other objective metrics. The development of new technology for sale as a business model has been in decline for a long time and is far from dominant in the bay area today. Note that this is not necessarily good or bad. It just is, and reflects a transition among a group of people from developing new technologies to exploiting that technology in more traditional business models.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Technology is always a means to an end, though. During the 50s and 60s, the technology being developed in Silicon Valley was all about how to make death rain down from the sky. The first wave of Silicon Valley immigration started with Lockheed's Polaris missile program. Fairchild Semiconductor was financed by a company that got started manufacturing bombsights, machine gun cameras, and spy satellites. Hewlett Packard started out building artillery shell fuses and anti-radar devices. Lawrence Livermore Labs was where nearly every atomic bomb of the cold war was developed. Usually when people talk of the bygone era when Silicon Valley was actually about technology, they're referring to one of two things: 1.) A particular sort of nostalgic history whitewashing where we forget that the money for all of these fundamental innovations largely came from DARPA contracts to find new, more efficient ways to vaporize Russians. 2.) The PC revolution of the 1970s, which started at Intel and PARC and then spread through Homebrew, Apple, and numerous other startups. Both of these apply the benefit of hindsight to what was actually going on at the time. There's plenty of the old Homebrew culture still going on in Silicon Valley - all you have to do is go to Maker Faire to see it. It's just that right now, at this moment, without the benefit of hindsight, it just looks like a bunch of geeks tinkering with toys.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      I thought HP's first product was an oscillator, used in the theramin that produced music for Disney's Fantasia. Or is that an urban legend?
      - nostrademons 11y ago
        That was their first product, but their sales took off because of defense contracts during WW2, growing from $100K in 1940 to millions of dollars by the end of the war. http://www.smecc.org/hewlett-packard_the_start__-2.htm http://www.smecc.org/hewlett-packard_the_start__-2.htm http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/264529/Hewlett-Packard-Company http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/264529/Hewlett-Pac...
    - fredkbloggs 11y ago
- avn2109 11y ago
  Not the OP, but in the golden age of Valley tech, say when Hewlett and Packard were still building great O-scopes full time, the dominant business model was "let's build this really useful apparatus and then sell it." Today, the dominant business model is "let's find a way to get a lot of people's attention and then sell the right to show them propaganda." Obviously these models are not even approximately equivalent and will attract/create very different ecosystems.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    Sure, but, the dominant business model would have been that back then too, if the economy supported it at the time. There are, in fact, a lot more companies now that do what Hewlett and Packard were doing then. One can't reasonably expect that set of companies would grow to infinite size, because the economy can only support so many of these types of businesses. So if we want to define only the former business model as a technology company, the end result would probably be "we've hit the limit of supportable technology companies, there will be no more technology companies until that changes". Because of this, it doesn't really make sense to define it that way[1]. It turns out the economy seems to support more of this other kind of business, so it has become dominant. That too is the natural order of things. Otherwise, this is like OP complaining "man, there aren't a lot of paper mills anymore", when the economy doesn't support paper mills being around anymore. [1] Though it is, of course, reasonable to have liked it better back in those days if you did.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
TulliusCicero 11y ago
> The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. I grew in Silicon Valley and work here now as a dev at one of the major tech companies and have no idea what you're talking about. The people I work with seem totally normal. Well I mean, they're all relatively enthusiastic about technology, and generally affluent, but aside from that I don't see anything particularly unusual.
- Osiris 11y ago
  > I grew in Silicon Valley > The people I work with seem totally normal. It could be that it's just what your used to. People that grew up outside of the area may see things a little differently based on their life experiences in other places.
  - TulliusCicero 11y ago
    I've also lived in Washington, Utah, and Alabama (and NYC for a couple months), so it's not like I don't have other experience. When I say they're totally normal, I don't mean they're exactly the same as anywhere else, but their personalities aren't particularly abnormal, certainly not to the point I'd say that they're "obnoxious and narcissistic."
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I think the portion of people the grandparent is talking about is relatively small in numbers, but relatively large in shrillness. I worked as a dev at one of the major tech companies here for 5 years and basically found that all my coworkers were nice, normal, fairly geeky engineers who really loved technology. My fiancee grew up in the area, doesn't work at tech, and most of her friends are locals. They're all very normal and friendly too. (Probably moreso than I'm used to - I grew up in New England, where everybody's reserved until you get to know them.) The problem is that the folks who are grandiose self-promoters seem to spend all their time self-promoting, which makes you disproportionately likely to run into them, particularly if you go to startup events. Stay away from that corner and Silicon Valley is basically just a bunch of highly-educated nerds who work very hard.
toephu2 11y ago
>The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. This should be read as YMMV (your mileage may vary). One person in Silicon Valley and his anecdotal evidence based on interactions w/ a few bad apples does not represent every single person in Silicon Valley.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Everytime I visit California, as a Chicagoan, I'm a little put out by the really ugly displays of materialism and general ostentatious attitudes. To each his own I guess, but if someone grew up with that, I could see them not even noticing it. For example, I find all the characters on HBO's Entourage to be insufferable and self-obsessed douchebags, but to some of the people I've talk to in the film business, they seem to love those characters and deeply relate with them.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    FWIW: I have found the same in Chicago :) These are all subjective things in practice, so ...
  - eruditely 11y ago
    Anyone who knows the two knows that Chicago is far worse. Also you cannot just say "California" you have to say which part and which subsection/side of city.
WalterSear 11y ago
>The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. This hasn't been my experience at all.
- ssutch3 11y ago
  Maybe not as a developer, but as a founder, I imagine you will experience this culture.
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    Who do you think I have been working for, and with?
chetanahuja 11y ago
"The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters." There are obnoxious and narcissistic people everywhere. I've been living here for many years after having grown up and lived in many different places all over the world. I feel like I'm usually surrounded by usually nice and helpful people here. Those statements by you sounds like an overly cynical's person's view of a place they've somehow come to hate and are probably perceiving that reflected back at them from the people you're surrounded with. Please please don't project your own problems on the whole society around you.

ultimoo 11y ago

>> Also, remember that most of "silicon valley" isn't involved in technology any more. It's become mostly a media/advertising center. There are still technology companies around, but the focus has definitely shifted. Can you please elaborate?

fredkbloggs 11y ago
I think a deeper discussion of what it means to be a technology company and the focus of bay area companies would be a hijack here. But, very briefly, if you view Google and Facebook as "technology companies", we disagree. The closest analogue to Google in terms of business model is a company now called Dex but for decades known as R. H. Donnelley and Sons, which published telephone books and sold advertising in them in the form of the Yellow Pages. Facebook's best analogue is probably a reality television show production company. These companies and many of their brethren are not in the business of developing and marketing new technology. They are in the media business and any technology they happen to develop is a sideshow. It may be used internally and never shared or it may be made open source for any of a number of (usually sound) business reasons, but the development and marketing of that technology is neither the company's primary business nor a significant source of its revenue. If you don't believe me, read the 10-Ks. You are what your revenue says you are. There are many, many other examples. If you look at a random sampling of promotional posts to HN, you will see a cross-section of the entire global economy: retailers (lots of 'em), restaurants, media, manufacturing, and yes, technology. It's fair to say that a lot of people in the bay area are interested in technology, but most of their employers are properly placed in other sectors based on their business models, revenue sources, and other objective metrics. The development of new technology for sale as a business model has been in decline for a long time and is far from dominant in the bay area today. Note that this is not necessarily good or bad. It just is, and reflects a transition among a group of people from developing new technologies to exploiting that technology in more traditional business models.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Technology is always a means to an end, though. During the 50s and 60s, the technology being developed in Silicon Valley was all about how to make death rain down from the sky. The first wave of Silicon Valley immigration started with Lockheed's Polaris missile program. Fairchild Semiconductor was financed by a company that got started manufacturing bombsights, machine gun cameras, and spy satellites. Hewlett Packard started out building artillery shell fuses and anti-radar devices. Lawrence Livermore Labs was where nearly every atomic bomb of the cold war was developed. Usually when people talk of the bygone era when Silicon Valley was actually about technology, they're referring to one of two things: 1.) A particular sort of nostalgic history whitewashing where we forget that the money for all of these fundamental innovations largely came from DARPA contracts to find new, more efficient ways to vaporize Russians. 2.) The PC revolution of the 1970s, which started at Intel and PARC and then spread through Homebrew, Apple, and numerous other startups. Both of these apply the benefit of hindsight to what was actually going on at the time. There's plenty of the old Homebrew culture still going on in Silicon Valley - all you have to do is go to Maker Faire to see it. It's just that right now, at this moment, without the benefit of hindsight, it just looks like a bunch of geeks tinkering with toys.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    I thought HP's first product was an oscillator, used in the theramin that produced music for Disney's Fantasia. Or is that an urban legend?
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      That was their first product, but their sales took off because of defense contracts during WW2, growing from $100K in 1940 to millions of dollars by the end of the war. http://www.smecc.org/hewlett-packard_the_start__-2.htm http://www.smecc.org/hewlett-packard_the_start__-2.htm http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/264529/Hewlett-Packard-Company http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/264529/Hewlett-Pac...
  - fredkbloggs 11y ago
avn2109 11y ago
Not the OP, but in the golden age of Valley tech, say when Hewlett and Packard were still building great O-scopes full time, the dominant business model was "let's build this really useful apparatus and then sell it." Today, the dominant business model is "let's find a way to get a lot of people's attention and then sell the right to show them propaganda." Obviously these models are not even approximately equivalent and will attract/create very different ecosystems.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  Sure, but, the dominant business model would have been that back then too, if the economy supported it at the time. There are, in fact, a lot more companies now that do what Hewlett and Packard were doing then. One can't reasonably expect that set of companies would grow to infinite size, because the economy can only support so many of these types of businesses. So if we want to define only the former business model as a technology company, the end result would probably be "we've hit the limit of supportable technology companies, there will be no more technology companies until that changes". Because of this, it doesn't really make sense to define it that way[1]. It turns out the economy seems to support more of this other kind of business, so it has become dominant. That too is the natural order of things. Otherwise, this is like OP complaining "man, there aren't a lot of paper mills anymore", when the economy doesn't support paper mills being around anymore. [1] Though it is, of course, reasonable to have liked it better back in those days if you did.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

TulliusCicero 11y ago

> The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. I grew in Silicon Valley and work here now as a dev at one of the major tech companies and have no idea what you're talking about. The people I work with seem totally normal. Well I mean, they're all relatively enthusiastic about technology, and generally affluent, but aside from that I don't see anything particularly unusual.

Osiris 11y ago
> I grew in Silicon Valley > The people I work with seem totally normal. It could be that it's just what your used to. People that grew up outside of the area may see things a little differently based on their life experiences in other places.
- TulliusCicero 11y ago
  I've also lived in Washington, Utah, and Alabama (and NYC for a couple months), so it's not like I don't have other experience. When I say they're totally normal, I don't mean they're exactly the same as anywhere else, but their personalities aren't particularly abnormal, certainly not to the point I'd say that they're "obnoxious and narcissistic."
nostrademons 11y ago
I think the portion of people the grandparent is talking about is relatively small in numbers, but relatively large in shrillness. I worked as a dev at one of the major tech companies here for 5 years and basically found that all my coworkers were nice, normal, fairly geeky engineers who really loved technology. My fiancee grew up in the area, doesn't work at tech, and most of her friends are locals. They're all very normal and friendly too. (Probably moreso than I'm used to - I grew up in New England, where everybody's reserved until you get to know them.) The problem is that the folks who are grandiose self-promoters seem to spend all their time self-promoting, which makes you disproportionately likely to run into them, particularly if you go to startup events. Stay away from that corner and Silicon Valley is basically just a bunch of highly-educated nerds who work very hard.

toephu2 11y ago

>The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. This should be read as YMMV (your mileage may vary). One person in Silicon Valley and his anecdotal evidence based on interactions w/ a few bad apples does not represent every single person in Silicon Valley.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Everytime I visit California, as a Chicagoan, I'm a little put out by the really ugly displays of materialism and general ostentatious attitudes. To each his own I guess, but if someone grew up with that, I could see them not even noticing it. For example, I find all the characters on HBO's Entourage to be insufferable and self-obsessed douchebags, but to some of the people I've talk to in the film business, they seem to love those characters and deeply relate with them.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  FWIW: I have found the same in Chicago :) These are all subjective things in practice, so ...
- eruditely 11y ago
  Anyone who knows the two knows that Chicago is far worse. Also you cannot just say "California" you have to say which part and which subsection/side of city.

WalterSear 11y ago

>The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters. This hasn't been my experience at all.

ssutch3 11y ago
Maybe not as a developer, but as a founder, I imagine you will experience this culture.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  Who do you think I have been working for, and with?

chetanahuja 11y ago

"The culture in "silicon valley" is toxic. People are obnoxious and narcissistic; many are pathological liars and self-promoters." There are obnoxious and narcissistic people everywhere. I've been living here for many years after having grown up and lived in many different places all over the world. I feel like I'm usually surrounded by usually nice and helpful people here. Those statements by you sounds like an overly cynical's person's view of a place they've somehow come to hate and are probably perceiving that reflected back at them from the people you're surrounded with. Please please don't project your own problems on the whole society around you.