Western Europe is about to finally see a substantial tech boom. It won't be due to any of the rather laughable government programs being attempted there routinely, rather, it's going to be caused by a large influx of US venture capital that has begun and will get a lot larger across this decade. That venture capital will reshape European tech dramatically, altering how they do tech start-ups and producing the first new tech giants there. European governments however will take most of the credit for the boom, because all of their efforts have failed across decades now and they're desperate. The primary things lacking in Europe have been enough risk capital and the shaping (how it's done, how you rapidly scale tech giants globally), the US VCs will bring that capital and the understanding of how to build giants (which Europe entirely lacks); they have all the talent necessary. Also, tech salaries in Europe will increase dramatically as they begin building some giants that poach at ever higher salaries.
Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
491–500 of 1001 posts
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 "moun…
Easy access to nature means I can go on a scenic five-mile hike between lunch and dinner. It means I can see a beautiful view without planning a day trip. I can meet with groups of friends of all fitness levels and enjoy a pleasant afternoon outdoors where we all have fun. I can go see thousands of migratory birds a few miles from my apartment. Half Moon Bay is 30-45 minutes away, depending on road conditions. Fairly…
> Easy access to nature means I can go on a scenic five-mile hike between lunch and dinner.
So can I, as I mentioned there's a major state park within the city limits where I live...
> It means I can see a beautiful view without planning a day trip.
Incredibly vague and subjective. What constitutes a "beautiful view"?
> I can meet with groups of friends of all fitness levels and enjoy a pleasant afternoon outdoors where we all have fun.
Not unique to the SF Bay Area at all.
Again I think this is very much a cherry-picked definition of "easy access to nature" that is designed to preclude any place not named "SF Bay Area." Still, the kinds of things you were describing can be found in metro areas all over the country.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
An influx of coastal refugees has driven real estate up and out of reach of many locals where I'm from. Those are the types of places that are "full", even with loads of building.
You can buy a home cheap in Detroit, that’s not a good thing. Wouldn’t rising home values signal economic growth? As long as there’s room to expand I don’t see the problem. SF’s issue isn’t high prices, it’s archaic zoning laws that limit supply to keep prices high for home owners.
Economic growth that isn't evenly distributed is not good.
If you're a poor person, you'd (probably) rather have a cheap home in a poor city surrounded by other poor people, than be the poor person stuck in a gentrifying neighborhood which is getting increasingly hostile to your presence.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
when the work is remote we don’t need remote-california to save 10% on wages. we will go to remote-ukraine or estonia and hire twice as many engineers
And then you would be committing the classic blunder. Putting more engineers on a late project makes it later.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree with this. I cannot find talented and senior folks who fill the niche of my team (deep understanding of Linux systems, containers, and operating distributed systems). There seem to be a lot of SWEs in the world and very few SREs, let alone vanilla systems administrators for hire who are really good. I think as an industry everyone is pushed towards software engineering and the large clouds have vacuumed up ev…
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Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 topi…
>"Detroit" moved to the suburbs
Similar thing can happen to SV. People moving to "suburbs" -> other parts of CA.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#497For 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. Initiall…
1+2 for me, then i'd sub 3 with
- access to the ocean, mountains (of different geology, from gentle rollers to crags & couloirs), forests, desert all within half a day's drive.
not that your 3 isn't accurate, it would just be my #4 :)
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stanford Research Park was a joint venture between Stanford and the city of palo alto . It was highly non-random.
Lots of failed research parks, oil wells, railroads, gold mining operations. The thing with oil wells, railroads, and gold mining, is that geography/geology matters more than path dependence. Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and to a lesser extent NYC and London, are more about path dependence. Their dominance in their sectors seem more resulting from, if anything specific to point to, legal factors, than geography or a…
I honestly do not understand the downvotes. These are perfectly valid points, well argued ...
Edit: Was grayed out when first seen.-
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#499It's still difficult to export very unique tangibles and intangibles from Silicon Valley. The intangibles: a high tolerance for risk and a high degree of insatiable curiosity unfettered by local religious and cultural customs found elsewhere. And these both fostered at the universities. Tangibles: Capital as a result of the largest growth of wealth in human history & the only port in the United States to export more…
Agreed. The tech industry had a very deep and localized impact in the last 30 years, but the conditions that led to the CA boom extend well beyond tech. Broadly, the ports, agriculture, weather, culture of tolerance, universities, natural spaces, etc. all contribute to the "innovation melting pot". If you are going to start a startup, CA provides much more than just VC funding.
Tangentially, lots of folks complain about high CA taxes, but these taxes largely go towards local projects and paying local salaries (unlike Federal taxes). These projects and jobs are direct stimulus to the economy and also provide a large potential customer base to startups. This is likely playing a bigger role in the startup ecosystem than most people realize.
On a more specific and personal anecdote, the green/clean energy sector is heavily based in CA because CA was an early mover in climate change energy policy and regulation. These policies started in the 70's, and the long slow growth of the industry that they enabled may be the primary reason that the US is even remotely in a position to try and tackle climate change (still a long way to go though). It takes a certain cultural and political climate to embrace these types of things, especially when the potential return on investment is on such long timescales.
Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> They're not looking for the most interesting work at that point, they're looking to keep their job and raise a family - it's a tradeoff. >> Isn't that a risk to move to a place without as many employment options? Yes. The reason for that risk is you can raise kids in a nice house for $500k rather than in a tiny, old, 2 bedroom apartment for 1.5M. You exactly summarized my thought process three years ago. To be fai…
Yep, agreed - sounds like we have a similar take :). In my specific case my SO grew up in Cupertino and her family is here, so that's another element that makes it hard to leave. I'm currently doing the live with roommates bit, but it's a hard tradeoff to make. Also I saw where you work in your HN bio - do you partner with VRAD (or maybe are considering starting your own)? I've always though leveraging ML imaging sof…
Why can't you rent a studio or 1-bedroom without roommates? A Bay Area tech salary should more than cover it.