Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#361

Post by sjg007 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #89

bigyikes wrote: post #13

As it happens, tomorrow I’m putting in my 30-day notice to terminate my lease and leave the Bay. (And I’m paying 2 additional months rent in fees to do so) Not being tied to the office fundamentally changes the calculus of choosing where to live. There just aren’t good reasons to live here anymore for so many of us. Even if you enjoy the area, chances are you can get a better deal by moving just a bit further away. A…

>> and still come out ahead financially. Ya. Earning a SF wage but living elsewhere is great. But there is a flip side to this coin. As employees realize they can work from home, employers also realize they can have employees work from home. They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages. Those who convert their in-office jobs into work-from-home are a covid oddity. Those who will be hired in the future on th…

I doubt it, software is eating the world, there aren't enough engineers and we see productivity gains like the cloud where you can basically run a global scale business with just a handful of people. We will probably see more of those companies than less.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#362

Post by cycrutchfield » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #274

The tech industry has beaten the Bay Area to within inches of its life. The pandemic may have saved it. Political mismanagement probably deserves most of the blame, because how else do you explain a historically significant economic boom reducing the quality of life for a highly developed region? I tried for many years to view the tech boom optimistically, but I as wrong.

You're blaming the tech industry for the faults of NIMBYism.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#363

Post by xienze » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

jmalicki wrote: post #339

munificent wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail. Maybe I'm missing, but I don't see anything in that list that isn't true of almost every metro area in the US. I think people living in SF notice when new services come out that are only available there, like Uber was at first. But they don't notice when those services late…

The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area. Other than easy access to nature, all of those points are true for major metro areas. But other than say, Salt Lake City, does any other metro area offer such close access to nature? Boston and Seattle are even much farther away...

> The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area.

Define "easy access to nature." Where I live, there's a major state park within the city limits and a very large lake within ~20 minutes drive. In ~2 hours I can be at the beach. In ~3-4 hours I can be in the mountains. And untold amounts of basically empty land just outside the city. If you're going to arbitrarily define "easy access to nature" as "mountains next to ocean right next to me", well OK, not a lot of places fit that bill. But that's a very narrow definition designed to fit basically SV.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#364

Post by ghaff » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

jmalicki wrote: post #339

munificent wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail. Maybe I'm missing, but I don't see anything in that list that isn't true of almost every metro area in the US. I think people living in SF notice when new services come out that are only available there, like Uber was at first. But they don't notice when those services late…

The primary point is easy access to nature from a metro area. Other than easy access to nature, all of those points are true for major metro areas. But other than say, Salt Lake City, does any other metro area offer such close access to nature? Boston and Seattle are even much farther away...

>Boston and Seattle are even much farther away...

I'll grant you the Santa Cruz Mountains if you're on the southern end of the Bay. You've also got the hills in the East Bay and various options in Marin and points north if you're in Marin.

But Boston, in addition to various coastal walks has a bunch of nearby parks and small mountains/hills to the west and in southern NH. Also tons of sea kayaking/canoeing. Depending upon where you live, bigger peaks in NH are maybe 2-3 hours.The Sierras are further than that from the SFBA.

Don't get me wrong. The Bay Area has great recreational options but so do a lot of other cities depending upon what you're looking for.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#365

Post by TuringNYC » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

raunakdag wrote: post #348

TuringNYC wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more thing for outsiders: Security Clearances are huge here, which really changes outcomes. @stryan Would love to chat offline if you're open? Really struggling in deciding whether I can continue to live in the region long term, despite being in love with the area and the people.

As someone who lives in the DMV (VA) - what’re the biggest factors influencing whether you can continue to live here long term?

Not being bored or underutilized at work. Excitement about career opportunities. Room to move upwards.

Hard-tech job opportunities w/o having to regress to an entry-level or mid-level role.

Senior level job opportunities, w/o having to join a consulting firm (i mean, if i'm potentially traveling 4/5 days, i'm not really 'living' here anymore...) I've rolled the dice on management consulting before in my life and spent almost no time in my home city. That was great when I was 20 and not so great with a family. I do wonder whether it is different w/ DC and local projects or whether it might be different in a partyly-WFH future!

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#366

Post by amoorthy » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

For me, the Bay Area offers a few benefits that are hard to replicate elsewhere.

1. Cultural diversity. I'm an immigrant and having lived in Seattle, Boston, NYC, and Philadelphia, I'd say the Bay Area is hands-down the most welcoming of all of those. It may seem like a small point but my parents and family can walk downtown in traditional clothing and no one even notices. Not true elsewhere.

2. The weather. Initially I thought this was overstated but I've realized after two decades in Boston and Toronto that seeing trees without leaves for six months of the year has an impact of my mental health. Seeing greenery, and enjoying warmth, even in January has a huge positive impact on my health.

3. The optimism. Most people I meet in the Bay Area are optimistic about how a problem can be improved. That's rare and I haven't found that in other cities or countries I've lived in. As an entrepreneur that's a wonderful to be part of.

Detractors of the Bay Area seem to hang out in very specific circles of friends which seem to be rather homogenous. A solution for me was having kids who go to public schools. I end up hanging out with people who are typically not other tech founders.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#367

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN. People have been leaving in numbers for the 30 years I've been here, always citing traffic & cost of housing as the primary reasons. Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive.

Re-posting my take:

"The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust against various forms of damage to the network. I see Silicon Valley as a similar type of system. It is not difficult to look back 40 years and see how at each inflection point, The Valley's constituent technologies, and the companies they spawned, led the rest of the world and scaled The Valley up.

- In the 1980s, Silicon Valley's Intel lost it's dominance in DRAM production to Japan. The economic impact was dire, and yet

- In the early 1990s, networking and workstations emerged from the likes of SUN and Cisco. They carried through until global competition stole their wind, and it was on to

- The late 90s and the .COM boom. And what a boom it was, Amazon, Google, followed by another death knell for myriad .COM corpses. Promptly engendering

- The 2000s birth of social media. MySpace faltered, then LinkedIn, then Facebook, then Twitter, came up and are still going strong on the foundation of

- 2010s open source platforms. Still mind-blowing: At one point WhatsApp had 40 software engineers and 400,000,000 users. At 3 years old.

I've heard about the exodus from California, usually citing so many thousands or 10s of thousands of people leaving. But looking a the net population changes, Santa Clara County is down 5,000 from 2018-2019. Alameda, San Mateo, San Francisco are all up.

Silicon Valley is a system that regenerates from one generation to the next, and so far, always bigger and more influential than the last."

Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803215

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

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Post by techelite » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

ed_balls wrote: post #352

dekhn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you make a similar statement in 1970 about Detroit?

"Detroit" moved to the suburbs. Check out the statistics for Oakland county (and possibly macomb county for the blue collar workers).

Toyota, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, VW, and all their parts suppliers(and the supplier parts suppliers) have at minimum a white collar office in south east Michigan.

The event that caused the Exodus from Detroit was the Race Riots. You can Google that because I'm not touching that topic.(and it doesn't help Detroit has a 1% tax)

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#369

Post by scarmig » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

rock_hard wrote: post #344

scarmig wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) SF & Valley: Education levels of the people here. You can get that in a couple other places--DC, NYC, Boston--but not too many others. Relatedly, two easily accessible world class universities are in the Bay Area: Boston beats us here, but we beat NYC and DC. 2) SF & Valley: Diversity. Bay Area cities top the list of largest number of foreign born residents, with only LA and NYC being competitive. 3) SF & Valley:…

Agree with all points except "Dating scene for men" As somebody who has lived on three continents in major metro area's as well as countryside IMO SFBA has the best dating scene. I am married now, so I have been out of the single pool for a couple years...but before that I will say that SFBA had the most attractive pool of available woman in the world, if intelligence, creativity, independence, being self starters an…

I agree that the SFBA has a very attractive pool of women, I just question whether they're available =) I've lived in a similar variety of metro areas as you, in North America, Europe, and Asia. San Francisco ranks dead last. Pretty much any guy can improve his dating outcomes by moving from SF to NYC, no matter what his standards are and what he's looking for, mostly because you can actually get regular dates with the accomplished, independent women there.

I have one friend who lived at a base in Antarctica for awhile, and he favorably compared the dating scene there to what's in SF.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#370

Post by cercatrova » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

One reason to stay in SV: Big tech total compensation is higher here than anywhere else in the world. That's why I'd continue to stay in SV rather than moving.