Ask HN: How's working in the Silicon Valley today?

I'm currently on the lookout for a new job after finishing my PhD in CS, but my last question didn't receive much love.

Therefore now, all-new, condensed and brief: How is working in the valley today? Especially if you are not much into the social media side of things and like to get your hands dirty the old-fashioned way (e.g. C,C++, system-level stuff, infrastructure, bare-metal development and so on)?

Would you recommend moving there despite the housing situation and inflation tendencies?

How many hours a week is the rule? >50? >60? >80? Is the income worth the additional hours and is there much left to live from after taxes and basic expenses? Is the working culture and atmosphere still inspiring? (Has it ever been?)

Real-life experience and tips welcome :)

It depends on who you work for and what you do there. Many different types of work and work structure are being used. The working culture is still inspiring, but really making progress by raising the bar is still difficult and pretty much required.

Longtime lurker, never posted on HN before. I am a mid-career software engineer working for a hardware company.

I don't live in the Palo Alto area and SF itself, because the cost of living is incredibly high. They are nice places for sure, and the social scenes there are more developed. You will have to pay to play there though.

Housing is very expensive, rents are very expensive. I see it as a tax on job portability. The important upside is that SV is the center of the universe for interesting computer science work. I have lived in several other places, and if you want to prioritize your career, and I am certain SV is the place to do it.

I am what is probably now considered "old-skool" (e.g. C++, semiconductors). There are still many opportunities in this space. Mail email me at ynka8+z1i2opfxuvoo@sharklasers.com if you are interested in talking about a job opportunity; the startup I work for is hiring.

I don't like the typical SV startup culture, I find it pretentious and too youthful. The HBO series Silicon Valley is more accurate I think than the general public realizes. That's a bit ironic since I work for a startup right now. :P I find that older engineers make much better decisions, and I'm pleased to be able to work with late-career heavy-hitters in my current company. It makes for a much more stable work environment, and our biz-dev prospects are more realistic than the social media rocket-ship blastoff overnight model.

I would say first, it depends on your personal life.

Depending on where you're coming from, moving a family out here may be a challenge. If it's just you I absolutely would recommend it, if not I still would recommend it, but there just are far more considerations to think about.

How many hours you'd work tends to have a wide range. All the current responses suggest insane hours are guaranteed. I probably work between 40-50 hours a week. The week before our last big feature release it was probably 60 or so, but that is the exception not the rule. This is going to depend entirely on the stage of the company you work for and the company itself.

As for salary, I make about 60-70% more than I would have if I stayed in the midwest. I also would be making 30% more if I was working for a big company as opposed to a startup, though with substantially less equity. That being said, I pay 2-2.5x for my apartment than I would have paid back home. However I can walk to work and have my groceries delivered - thus don't have a car payment, car insurance, etc, so it is somewhat evened out. At the end of the day, I make enough to have plenty to live on.

The biggest thing for me though is the atmosphere, not just where I work, but in general - tech is the norm and walking down the street (at least in soma) I frequently hear people talking about database performance, or whether AWS is worth the price, or about a new library being released that makes doing X easier. I love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else. And is absolutely worth whatever the difference between what my net income after expenses is here as opposed to the midwest.

I don't see anything that you've said that's unique to Silicon Valley, except perhaps for the extreme hours which I never experienced. Especially the "QA gets no respect" bit; I jointed Lucent for a QA including programming QA stuff job and it was a miserable, never again, I advise all my friends to avoid it like the plague.