Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

Yeah sure let's move to the South Bay and live in the 12th circle of Hell, a.k.a., the worst abomination of city planning known to North America. San Jose used to be a city on the upswing but after the riots and COVID it has the feeling of a shell of a city that is being kept alive by the nice infrastructure they built there a short while ago. Sunnyvale is peak suburbia -- endless tracts of suburban homes and strip malls with not a single good piece of public transit infrastructure to speak of (VTA has terrible station planning and trains from CalTrain comes every few millennia). Cupertino is basically a walled community where only people with incomes of over $500k gain access. Milpitas is a city that essentially doesn't exist, not even the people who I know live there admit its existence. Los Altos is like Cupertino but everyone has a Stanford education and is a next-level evolved NIMBY, and Los Gatos is kinda like that but with more wine and pretentiousness. Saratoga and Campbell are so deep inside the suburban critical mass that it takes ~30 minutes to drive to anything of note, and you'll be blasting your AC while you do so because the coastal fog burns off very quickly in those parts. Outside of the aforementioned tech conferences there aren't many things to do in the Bay Area -- people who live there have been drawn in by either the good schools or jobs.

... all that being said, I have lived in the Bay Area for a long time and do not intend to leave anytime soon. There aren't many other places in the world that can be called hubs of biotech, software and semiconductors all at the same time. Many parts of the South Bay are S-tier in terms of safety while maintaining the same price point as SF, so if you prioritize safety over having a life outside the confines of your computer terminal you return to after your 8-6 job, then the South Bay is actually pretty good. If you want to be able to hit the beach after a night of raving and clubbing preceded by 5-star dining and zuck-surfing on the Bay, while being willfully ignorant about the constant risk of a homeless man jumping out of the bushes at you, then SF is your best bet.

Nice thing is you’ll get to interview with almost every employee if it’s small enough. Should be easy to sus out whether it’s one of the good or bad places.

Welcome to SF!

Big +1 to the meetup, hackathon and conference scene.

There is no city with as many events as SF. Follow this other local with a pulse on the local meetup scene:

https://twitter.com/michelleefang/status/1675997093989842944

+1 to building up a GitHub profile. Find something interesting at a meet up or hackathon to explore in your free time and do it out in the open on GitHub. Learn by doing. And a good GH profile with good code samples helps tremendously when applying for jobs.

+1 to eventually finding an in-person job. Remote has huge advantages as you know, but being in an office with a few people you really gel with has massive advantages for learning, getting things done, and building life long personal connections. I’m fully remote now but consider my SF office days the glory days of career growth and fun.

My advice on this is to look for the right people to work with… A manager that is a good mentor and peers that are fun to work with. Id work at a boring company with a great boss and colleagues over the most exciting startup pitch or growth any day.

Since you’re gainfully employed and have some free time, take your time with all of the above!_

I truly believe all of the above is easier to find in SF than most places by getting out and about in the city.

Also - I'm only in the bay area as I need to be, but reach out. Happy to answer questions, figure a time to meet up, etc. I have no knowledge where to hang out..Coupa Cafe isn't what it was, Red House in Mountain View isn't what it was.

I was in Bay Area from 2015-2018 and because of the connections I build there I occasionally get to work on projects that pay 10x higher than what I get paid for in my home country.

To OP, I recommend to network with open mind and enjoy the tech savvy diversity.

In addition to meetup I recommend cold emailing companies and asking founders in your area of interest directly for picking up a brain. The ecosystem is very welcoming.