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Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

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31–40 of 87 posts

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#31
Matter for what?

Founding a tech startup and getting VC funding? Working at a FAANG or tech unicorn? Maxing your compensation? Easily job hopping? Being part of large social or professional networks centered around tech? Working on the bleeding edge of the industry? Yes to all of these.

Working a software engineering job that will pay significantly better than the median salary in the area and let you have a good standard of living and a good overall life? No, if you have adequate skill you can achieve that anywhere in the world.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#33
Paul Graham’s advice: it still matters to be in Bay Area as a founder because you are the average of your 5 closest friends. And in Bay Area your 5 closest founder friends are much more likely to be successful (possibly very successful) and that happening much less in any other city.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#34
post #23
post #8

Possibly unpopular opinion: there was always plenty of room for individuals to have a fulfilling tech career outside of the Bay Area, and those opportunities have if anything grown in recent years. Bay Area folks always talk like all the opportunities are concentrated there but that's never really been true and will just be less and less true as VC money dries up. I'm sure some of it depends on what you're trying to…

Moving to the Bay Area was the best thing I've ever done for myself financially. The network of companies, developers, and investors/advisers (in good times) is unparalleled and enough to make you a career if you can hack it, and give you the exposure to people to mentor you and teach you how to hack it. Moving away from the Bay Area was the second best thing I've ever done for myself financially, because once you ha…

“ that dystopian hellhole where the only positive quality of life is the weather.”

Eesh that’s laying in on thick. SF is clearly not your cup of tea but no need for this type of hyperbole. I happen to enjoy the Bay Area, and S.F. in particular. People have different things they are interested in.

You wouldn’t want me to hyperbolically rant on about how many other areas of the country are concrete mcdonaldified wastelands. Or whatever place you moved to, some people would rant about how bad it is.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#35
post #28
post #8

Possibly unpopular opinion: there was always plenty of room for individuals to have a fulfilling tech career outside of the Bay Area, and those opportunities have if anything grown in recent years. Bay Area folks always talk like all the opportunities are concentrated there but that's never really been true and will just be less and less true as VC money dries up. I'm sure some of it depends on what you're trying to…

No one has ever said that 100% of software engineers need to be in the Bay Area. Yes there are plenty of people living elsewhere who have had fulfilling careers in the industry. Yet it is undeniable that – just like being an actor in LA or an investment banker in New York – your opportunities for job search, networking, career growth etc. are significantly higher by being where the ecosystem is concentrated.

> Yet it is undeniable that – just like being an actor in LA or an investment banker in New York

This is what I object to: the comparison to acting or investment banking tends to exaggerate the centralization of tech jobs.

If you want to be in a film and aren't in LA then you don't really want to be in a film, because a solid majority of the jobs are there. I imagine the same is true for investment banking and New York.

San Jose and San Francisco, on the other hand, represented ~180k of the nation's ~1650k software developers in 2023 [0]. That's ~10% of all US-based software developers and about 0.6% of all software developers in the world [1]. Not a tiny percentage, but nowhere close to Hollywood's dominance in film.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-many-software-developers-...

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described a lot of cities in the US though

Exactly, Pittsburgh PA checks all those boxes with a fraction of cost of living and crime. Also, way way way more artists - because they can afford to live there. The art scene in the bay is actually really bad.

I can see that about Pittsburgh. My wife did college there, and we've visited a few times. It's got the right mix of tech and working class, I think.

That's what I miss about Philadelphia. Actually, probably the only thing I miss, because there are a lot of problems in Philly, too. But the indie hacker scene in Philly was amazing. We had a lot of intermingled circles of entrepreneurs, hackers, and artists . If you wanted to get something done and make it a cool, weird thing along the way, you just had to show up at the hackerspace with some parts and beer.

I'm in the DC area now, since I got married 10 years ago. Nothing like that here. Lots of extremely intelligent people, but no desire to Just Make Things. Everyone's got their career plan, retirement plan, home ownership plan. And none of it involves just hanging out and fucking around with a soldering iron.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#37

I moved here ~2 years ago to join an early stage startup and while its "not what is used to be"[1] I have personally benefited a lot from being exposed to the business and engineering culture here. I'm starting my own company now and have access to much more networking events and people who "get it" than I think I could have access to if I lived anywhere else. I haven't though so its hard to say. There is an incredib…

> The open minded attitudes and culture around risk is something that you can really internalize when you are around other people who give you the correct social proof. Never lived in the Bay Area, but even when Bay Area people visit or show up in my career orbit, the difference is pretty massive. Especially when compared to Canadians on risk taking. Bay Area will spend a week to try something. Canadians will take a…

And this blown up to the scale of an entire country is why Canada is suffering so much today. On every metric of measurement they are going down because the ability to take risks is simply missing in the country.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The open minded attitudes and culture around risk is something that you can really internalize when you are around other people who give you the correct social proof. Never lived in the Bay Area, but even when Bay Area people visit or show up in my career orbit, the difference is pretty massive. Especially when compared to Canadians on risk taking. Bay Area will spend a week to try something. Canadians will take a…

And this blown up to the scale of an entire country is why Canada is suffering so much today. On every metric of measurement they are going down because the ability to take risks is simply missing in the country.

It's also because the many Canadian risk-takers moved to the Bay Area for the concentration of talent and high pay. It's easy to fly down with $50 and an offer letter to work anywhere you want for 3 years (indefinitely renewable) as a software engineer on TN status. Then you can take all the time you need to win the H-1B lottery, or just petition I-485 directly off TN (additional risks apply petitioning directly from nonimmigrant status, this is not immigration advice, ask an attorney, etc).

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#39
As for SF: Most of the OGs left a while ago, it's basically like a post-Palo Alto now, a lot of AI startups, and a mecca for recent grads to keep feeling like they're still in college except substitute AI startup for school. They even look a lot like students, plus the typical SF activities: Biking The Wiggle, people running in the Panhandle, sunny days at Dolores, weekends in Napa.

On the entrepreneurial side, it's like these WeWork single-founder startups from the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Canada, NY) who are doing everything from crypto bro stuff to trying to build tech for acquire-hire, flying through engineers and designers to do so. On the enterprise side it's mostly companies servicing all these: Rippling, WeWork, Vercel, cloud providers, payment providers, Salesforce.

The entire Bay Area is getting calmer and more neighborhood-like: The peninsula and East Bay seem nicer than ever. A lot of SF people moved to Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and towns like Redwood City are really shaping up into lovely suburbs. Where I live (Upper Haight, SF) the old school skateboard/pizza/weed/fashion vibe is coming back, the Dead Heads are not a very strong influence anymore but there are some, kinda feels like a little 90s pocket here, but we lost a lot of live music and a lot of culture. The whole city seems to have lost a lot of music, restaurants, and entertainment - it's overall pretty boring right now. There's more spontaneous live music in Santa Cruz or peninsula. There's a pretty strong homeowner and gardening vibe in a lot of neighborhoods of SF, the Slow Streets thing is making it feel more suburby in areas. Bernal is stuck up beyond belief, just like before but multiply it, it's gotten more sophisticated, same homeowners up there as before, Good Life still there, remodeled but the same basically. Noe is strange, the babies are no longer babies but now giant 10 year olds, feels like an urban kid-ran neighborhood over there - strong cul-de-sac family vibes. More surfing and skimboarding at beaches than I remember from 10+ years ago, more action sports in general - skateparks have improved. Bike lanes and roads have improved, overall crime is lower and things are cleaner all over the Bay Area except for the classic bad spots of East Bay.

I've lived here for most of my life so it's hard to compare it to other places, I would say it's maturing and improving and I expect the West Coast in general to fill out like the East Coast over the next 100 years, so I take that into consideration with the overall growth trend. It's still very much a place of building and construction and growth. Though as I say this I've seen more "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs on buildings than ever before within SF - I think the surrounding areas are growing more than the city, the city is overall somewhat boring and quiet but I love it.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#40
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has ever said that 100% of software engineers need to be in the Bay Area. Yes there are plenty of people living elsewhere who have had fulfilling careers in the industry. Yet it is undeniable that – just like being an actor in LA or an investment banker in New York – your opportunities for job search, networking, career growth etc. are significantly higher by being where the ecosystem is concentrated.

> Yet it is undeniable that – just like being an actor in LA or an investment banker in New York This is what I object to: the comparison to acting or investment banking tends to exaggerate the centralization of tech jobs. If you want to be in a film and aren't in LA then you don't really want to be in a film, because a solid majority of the jobs are there. I imagine the same is true for investment banking and New Yo…

It might be wrong to think in terms of “where the most jobs are”. Rather think in terms of where the center of gravity is.
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