121–130 of 226 posts
Little do they know that SV is just as desolate? Most of the big tech firms are 1-2 hours away from SF in suburbia.
Can you name one "big tech firm" that is 2 hour away from SF?
I grew up in San Diego before spending 20 years in the Bay Area. While I totally understand why a fresh graduate would want to head north to the bay, I think as a place to CREATE a startup, San Diego has tremendous potential. The weather is beautiful and actually beats SF. It's close to 70 year round, nice and dry, with great beaches and mountain and desert hiking. As the article notes downtown has been evolving in a…
If someone wants to be a 'blub' programmer than SD is probably no worse than any other place, but someone looking to grow their career and have fun doing it, I'd recommend LA, OC, South Bay, and SF above SD whole heartedly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has its ups and downs. The general lack of overtime is nice, and from what I've seen of it the work pace is pretty lax and it's not hard to keep your job. The problem with it is that it seems to be a big make-work jobs program for engineers. Defense projects these days just seem to drag on forever and rarely bear any fruit. It's not like working in the commercial sector where your work has a decent chance of actua…
To be fair, my company was a little unconventional. We made NLP systems for defense clients, and as such we were working on interesting problems and had some real scientists on our payroll. I actually felt kinda out of place because I came from a systems and platform background and wound up being immersed in academic CS stuff and computational linguistics, while also being surrounded by experts on the subject with lo…
I'll also add that some places are not just warming chairs with asses, but intentionally gaming the numbers and incurring mountains of technical debt in an apparent effort to suck more money out of the government customer than they were originally willing to pay, which is usually an insane amount to begin with.
It's hard to see the line between make-work scheme and outright fraud, but think I was probably on the wrong side of it for roughly two years. I didn't care much for the territorial pissing and office-level politics there, either.
The only reason I stayed at that place so long was because I was so sick of job-hunting and interviewing that I couldn't bring myself to do it more than once or twice a week. In the end, I settled for an opening at the same company that had laid me off with three days notice and no severance two years before, which was what forced me to go to the crap job in the first place.
I did a brief contracting stint in SF, and considered relocating up there for work (the pay is indeed much better) but ultimately decided against it. Note that I grew up in the Bay Area.
In SD I pay $2300/month for a 2500 sqft house with a yard and garage, 4 blocks from the ocean. While in SF, I paid this for a single room in a shady neighborhood without a window.
After coming back here, I was struck by how clean it is compared to SF.
For the young people, SD has some of the best nightlife I have experienced (and I've been everywhere throughout California). SF has better food but our culinary scene is getting much better and has improved drastically over the last decade, IMO.
We also have a growing capital scene. Its not SV, but if I were an investor I would hole up here - its nicer, cheaper, and the burn rate is lower. Plus we have some big players here: Rockstar, Sony, Psyonix (Rocket League), Qualcomm, many military contractors, and so forth. Even a bit of history here - FTL (which made Dungeon Master) was located in SD.
Anyhow I'll stick around here for now. :)
I grew up in San Diego before spending 20 years in the Bay Area. While I totally understand why a fresh graduate would want to head north to the bay, I think as a place to CREATE a startup, San Diego has tremendous potential. The weather is beautiful and actually beats SF. It's close to 70 year round, nice and dry, with great beaches and mountain and desert hiking. As the article notes downtown has been evolving in a…
As an engineer who also grew up in San Diego and now works here full-time, I totally agree. I think there is tremendous potential for innovation in San Diego, the hardest part is finding investors. As you said, there are many great universities nearby, with plenty of young talent who might be disenfranchised with the high cost of living/lifestyle of SV(or maybe that's just me,the disenfranchised part, not the talent)…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Defense jobs are terrible, soul-crushing nightmares > My soul is already nearly squashed flat Can you elaborate? What, exactly, was soul-crushing? I worked for a small defense contractor from January 2015 to March 2016, and it didn't feel soul-crushing to me. In fact, I liked the fact that we were mostly forbidden from working overtime. Mind you, I don't miss the timekeeping policies one iota (including how we hand…
It has its ups and downs. The general lack of overtime is nice, and from what I've seen of it the work pace is pretty lax and it's not hard to keep your job. The problem with it is that it seems to be a big make-work jobs program for engineers. Defense projects these days just seem to drag on forever and rarely bear any fruit. It's not like working in the commercial sector where your work has a decent chance of actua…
OTOH, a high percentage of startups end up dead, their code abandoned
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on which part. North-east PQ (over by Rolling Hills) homes were built in the early 70s and are still going in the low 600's. I believe west PQ (Black Mountain Rd area) homes are newer and more expensive.
we could start a PQ HN meet-up. My treehouse accomodates 4 and has a pulley system. We can haul up buckets of beer :) Note to self: uptownfunk, falkenb0t also in PQ. That's 5
I grew up in San Diego before spending 20 years in the Bay Area. While I totally understand why a fresh graduate would want to head north to the bay, I think as a place to CREATE a startup, San Diego has tremendous potential. The weather is beautiful and actually beats SF. It's close to 70 year round, nice and dry, with great beaches and mountain and desert hiking. As the article notes downtown has been evolving in a…
> The computer science program at UCSD is typically ranked about 15th globally, CalTech is not terribly far north, nor is UCLA and UC Irvine and UCSB and UC Riverside, and SDSU, though it has a reputation as a party school, is no slouch. Also USC and Harvey Mudd.
As someone from Dallas who's considering a move next year (not by choice; our state legislature has promised to pass laws next year that will make it effectively illegal for me to continue to live here), I have no interest in ever setting foot in NorCal, but SoCal is on my short list. I find the Silicon Valley tech industry frightening and the culture associated with it degenerate. I'm not interested in the out-of-co…
In that case, I suggest flying right over LA and continuing directly to San Diego or some place even more affordable. LA's real estate market, once you factor in transportation delays and issues with the school system, is out-of-control too.
As a CS grad, you have a shot at working for Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. and these are regarded as some of the best places to work __in the world__. For the Hacker News crowd I'll add that you might not agree, but that perception is certainly widespread.
The huge opportunity in the Bay Area for them, at this point in their lives, outweighs the benefits of living in San Diego. Google "San Diego vs Bay Area" to see what those are. Cost of living, weather, beaches are probably on the list.
The discussion in the article about Sorrento Valley is ridiculous. It's a tiny area just minutes away from La Jolla and University Towne Centre (UTC). La Jolla/UTC is heavily developed, modern, and has plenty of young people due to being close to UCSD. Don't forget all the non-tech grads go to live somewhere too. Perhaps it is being compared to Silicon Valley because they both have "valley" in the name.