151–160 of 1001 posts
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Without William Shockley moving to the west coast, the "Silicon" part of Silicon Valley would likely be elsewhere in the world.
As you point out he could've chosen elsewhere to move. Seems likely the aforementioned developments helped him pick where he did.
Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse ). SFBA did nothing special to attract the wealth of technology companies, they effectively got lucky with Shockley/Fairchild/Traitorous 8 and the boom in technology that followed. It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopa…
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We’ve been trying to hire these people for ages locally and remotely and we still couldn’t find them so I have no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19.
A lot of people, myself included, have been quite hesitant to work remotely until now. I've been pleasantly surprised how well it's gone and would consider a remote position in the future but I think it'd have to be a fully remote team. When offices do return, being one of a few remote workers means you will likely be left out of a lot of teambuilding, conversations, etc.
There is a supremacy, but the idea that it is threatened is hyperbolic, designed to get readers. This is a small shift in the grand scheme. It might help create new centers. But the gravity is going to be around the universities and infrastructure that is unique to the area. Shifts like that rarely happen overnight. Especially not because of something as temporary as a pandemic.
There are great universities outside of sf and even the us. ETH zurich for example. In zurich you also have google, oracle and co. We also have high speed internet for cheap. And are able to fo worldwide business, even in a pandemic. And thats just switzerland. Not sure if there is any reason for sf once most startups moved sonewhere else.
My LinkedIn account is always flooded by recruiters. That gives engineers leverage to seek new and better opportunities all the time.
Plus networking is also a big one.
Unless you get a job at Google/Oracle and planning on retiring there, SV wins hands down.
The language barrier is also a no go along with cost of living.
I'd love to hear from people who want to stay in the Bay area what is unique that you cannot find elsewhere in cheaper locales. I lived in Mountain View for 3 months during 500 startups and the valley proper was the most garden variety suburban existence you could find anywhere. I lived in SF proper off and on and can attest that it certainly has (had?) fantastic restaurants/shops and a particular type of culture tha…
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> poor public schools in many areas What exactly makes them so bad?
I don't know exactly, but my experience is that most parents say private schools do a better job (teachers are better engaged and aren't checked out, apathetic pencil pushers). In the areas with good school districts (and there are a handful of those), things swing to another extreme: too much pressure, like Singapore-style schools, which causes children to buckle under the pressure later in their lives.
The issue is that the kids going to the "poor" schools are poor. Their home life is shit because they're frequently sharing a two bedroom apartment with another family. They're dealing with parents who are unable to afford a better housing situation (not just renting a house - but they can't even afford to rent a place without another family being in it - lots of multigenerational housing happening too, which has pro/con) and who frequently have to work much more than some dual income FAANG tech couple - and they have a much worse quality of life. The parents aren't very involved because they just have other priorities.
This leads to the kids randomly dropping out middle of the year. Every year, the kids I know who went to Santa Clara schools ended up with their class sizes shrinking throughout the year because kids would just disappear middle of the year. That has the pros of less kids per classroom as the schoolyear goes on but it has downsides like... well, you can't make any long term friendships! On top of that, if you are in a family that is doing well - you're gonna be unrelatable to the other kids. And it goes true with the parents too.
One of the reasons my friends have put their kids in private schools is because their kids are around people like themselves, the parents operate under a collective agreement (they are all too involved in their parenting style), and there's just a commonality in background. At the public school, kids of all backgrounds could be interfacing and it just didn't give much social cohesion. Everyone had different goals. Some kids/parents wanted to just get to the next grade along with some babysitting - others wanted much more. Public school mostly is for handling the first people.
This is what happens when a city neglects basic quality of life issues, and allows petty crime to thrive. It happened to New York in the 1970's and took roughly three decades to recover from. Good luck, San Francisco.
I think many people prefer petty crime to tech elites. With the upward pressure on rents over the last 10 years, even having your bike stolen every few weeks is cheaper than getting evicted and/or having to find a market rate dwelling. Of course, it's better to have neither exploding costs nor petty crime, but at the end of the day, dealing with petty crime is more affordable. EDIT: Getting downvoted to oblivion but…
But you seem to be condoning that preference, and that preference is ridiculous. An economic boom should not be a bad thing. And tech is not raising rents, it is raising housing demand which could easily be met with a corresponding rise in supply that would limit the price increases, but new housing has been being actively blocked for decades.
You also leave out an important factor, most of the city that is supporting the policies that enable petty crime here have no skin in the game. They live in nice neighborhoods where they've owned their houses for decades making them massively wealthy and don't have to interact with the undesirables. It's easy to look the other way and ignore the downtown problems of homelessness and street crime, and to be so woke that you don't want any crime prosecuted, when it doesn't affect you.
Tech in SFBA reminds me of the Resource curse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse ). SFBA did nothing special to attract the wealth of technology companies, they effectively got lucky with Shockley/Fairchild/Traitorous 8 and the boom in technology that followed. It seems the local gov't have squandered an opportunity to truly capitalize on the gift they were given, and perhaps even done their best to jeopa…
This is ridiculous. The Bay Area, specifically Stanford and Berkeley, contributed to the WWII tech research initiative and then afterwards, Terman made Stanford Research Park which led to Silicon Valley.
Because Shockley moved here. Fairchild was founded here, and the Fairchildren built Silicon Valley and its venture capitalism.
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I always answer: fuck off; we're full. California, particularly Bay Area California is so ridiculously dysfunctional, the last thing any region needs is their refugees, who will bring with them the problems they're fleeing. Austin for example. Used to be a great place.
That’s a ridiculous take. There’s a lot of technical talent trapped in the Bay Area and I welcome it in my region. Treating every resident as if they agree with the repressive SF politics is over generalizing. And who’s full? The main thing the flyover states need is more people.
It's the NIMBY anti-change response to policy.
The people that want a strong economy, incentivize building housing, and adapting lead to positive non-zero-sum outcomes.
The people that say "fuck off we're full" block any policy and create perverse incentives that create a dysfunctional mess.
This is ignoring the selection bias that the people leaving now are probably also the people not interested in CA anti-housing, high-tax policy and would likely be a better fit on these policy issues in Austin than the commenter thinks.
Largely I think comments like the one you replied to are just responding to what they see as the enemy tribe in the political culture war.
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Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving. For a kind of funny example, there was an episode of the all-in podcast (mostly a podcast of successful VCs) where they talked about SV politics and leaving. The irony was while they talked about CA politics to an absurd degree ("worst run state in US", etc.) when they asked each other if they were planning on leaving al…
>> Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving. >> I have had older friends leave to have a family. They went to Santa Cruz, Seattle, Denver, DC, and Austin. It's a shame. The ones that stayed either are very rich where a $5M house is not an issue, or they still live with three roommates and rent without kids. Just wait until they look for interesting jobs and get…