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

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

#781

Post by TuringNYC » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #500

gonehome wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm the GP commentor, and in my case, theoretically I can, though in my case I have a wife and two children, so it does get tight.

And while I'm grateful for everything I have in life, and I have been given much more than my grandparents abroad...I do wonder -- after struggling through top colleges and a working hard for over two decades with ever increasing responsibility, whether I really "deserve" a 1br or should I aspire to more for my family and me.

I realize it sounds both selfish but also reasonable based on how one looks at things. For now, we've chosen to live very comfortably in DC.

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

#782

Post by babesh » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

babesh wrote: post #771

pjlegato wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walkable parts of those cities is vanishingly small, on the order of a few square blocks. The tiny walkable segment is also super-expensive.

Berkeley's walkable area is actually pretty extensive. The others are less so. Berkeley's walkable area encompasses all of Telegraph Avenue down to Ashby (Berkeley Bowl) (South), all of downtown (West), the perimeter of the UC Berkeley campus and the campus itself, and probably half way down University avenue (further West), the North Berkeley area to the north of downtown Berkeley (Chez Panisse, etc...) (North). If…

The problem with Berkeley is that you can’t get to other areas quickly. BART and the Bay Bridge sucked pre pandemic.

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

#783

Post by onecommentman » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

hashkb wrote: post #635

rpearl wrote: post #555

Nobody really brings up that the bay area is one of few places in the US where you can live without a car. Really, even compared to other "walkable" cities beyond a select few, similarly expensive places. Nobody really brings up that the bay area has better LGBT and other minority protections than anywhere in the US, either. Every time someone mentions cheap midwest cities I have to pull up https://crossingenres.com/…

Everyone brings that up. All the time. As one of the (maybe not elite) tech people who has left the Bay Area, I can tell you that we're well known braggarts. The "SF attitude" actually makes it harder for us to integrate into new communities. Edit: also, SF isn't _that_ walkable; have you spent time in NYC? SF was a huge letdown to me once I had lived there for a couple of years.

When you can have an entire South Park episode predicated on the notion of smugness in San Francisco, you can be assured the rest of the country is aware of, and partially buys into, that characterization.

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Smug_Alert!

Now, it’s not bragging if it’s true. The problem is...well, it’s a big, wide, wonderful country and world with lots of great places and ways of life to be discovered. Keep an open mind, and try to keep a closed mouth. Reminds me of the buttons that proclaimed “I don’t care how you do it in NYC”.

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

#784

Post by malandrew » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #727

habosa wrote: post #689

In the last 10-15 years San Francisco gained a ton of residents that didn't want to be there at all. They moved there because the job opportunities in tech were too hard to turn down. I had some friends like this, they just never really liked the city. Now they're all leaving because their job is not making them stay. That's fine and I'm happy they have more choices now. But there's a flip side to that. One of my lea…

This story is insanely misleading though. Everyone here is talking about why the tech elite are leaving due to the quality of life when Keith Rabois specifically has like 3-4 IPOs he was an early investor in going public right now and makes no sense to stay in California in 2021 and pay state capital gains taxes on those sales. Same with Elon Musk and Tesla’s absurd stock price. And probably a lot of other people giv…

The state didn't make them rich. You're giving credit where none is due.

Their hard work coupled with many others like them that worked with them made them rich. The same group of people could have been in another state and done just as well.

The people in California that made people successful are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks and Keith Rabois of the area. VC money is the king maker. In the Bay Area it all started with Fairchild. It's the same reason why Seattle is successful. All the Microsoft money seeded the tech scene there.

These kingmakers have had enough of California and are leaving for greener pastures where they can continue to build successful companies without the state leaching off their work.

If they show up in Texas and other states and succeed in replicating their success, it will be clear it was them and not California that was responsible for the success. I'm glad California is rapidly losing its undeserved monopoly on tech.

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

#785

Post by headsupftw » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #102

godot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this and completely agree. I lived in the bay area since high school, more than two decades ago. Last year I finally moved away from it for good. Not far, just to the Greater Sacramento area. (I've been working remotely for a couple years, well before COVID) Qualify of life improvement is huge. Weather and cultural are important reasons for me to stay in California (plus family and friends), and I still get tha…

> real summers/not chilly I mean, it's not cold once you get outside of SF/San Bruno. If you're in the peninsula or south bay, it's really fucking hot during the summer. Uncomfortably hot because no one has AC and many of the homes don't have insulation still.

Don't know about peninsula but in south bay tons of old homes have AC. And more importantly, dry hot feels very comfortable to me personally.

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

#786

Post by BobbyJo » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

greensquirrel wrote: post #779

habosa wrote: post #689

In the last 10-15 years San Francisco gained a ton of residents that didn't want to be there at all. They moved there because the job opportunities in tech were too hard to turn down. I had some friends like this, they just never really liked the city. Now they're all leaving because their job is not making them stay. That's fine and I'm happy they have more choices now. But there's a flip side to that. One of my lea…

> they just never really liked the city. Pretty hard to like a city where a non-trivial portion of the residents are hating on you and blaming you and others like you for many problems of their own doing. I left a year ago and I personally hope both San Francisco and all of California suffers fiscal collapse. The state grossly mistreats it's most productive citizens, when its those very citizens that fund the greates…

I can echo this. I loved the bay when I first moved here 8 years ago, but the political dynamic of the area, and the ever growing drug/homelessness crisis said dynamic is completely unable to deal with, both have just worn my enthusiasm away.

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

#787

Post by yonran » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:25 AM UTC

rmk wrote: post #74

The major obstacle to living in SV is the insane cost of homeownership that puts the (pretty commonplace) aspiration of living in one's own home with a nice yard out of reach of all but the richest (even being in the top 5% of incomes in the nation is no guarantee of being able to own a house in Palo Alto, for example.) With the recent passing of Prop 19, things get even worse: people who are looking to inherit homes…

For Proposition 19, if the house is in a trust that the beneficiaries can “share and share alike”, then the trustee can give the house to one sibling (the one who will live in the property) and give cash to the other siblings to avoid reassessment.

Or you can transfer the property before February 16, 2021; see https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2020-11-proposition-19-paren...

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

#788

Post by LdSGSgvupDV » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

The reason most of people went to CA is the same as the reason people went to US. Opportunity and money. People come, people go. Why does SF's supremacy matter? There is always next Silicon Valley.

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

#789

Post by headsupftw » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:26 AM 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...

"nature": beaches, mountains, ski resorts, redwood forests... Seattle is like that or even better but 9 months out of a year the weather is just a big no no.

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

#790

Post by tempsy » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #784

tempsy wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story is insanely misleading though. Everyone here is talking about why the tech elite are leaving due to the quality of life when Keith Rabois specifically has like 3-4 IPOs he was an early investor in going public right now and makes no sense to stay in California in 2021 and pay state capital gains taxes on those sales. Same with Elon Musk and Tesla’s absurd stock price. And probably a lot of other people giv…

The state didn't make them rich. You're giving credit where none is due. Their hard work coupled with many others like them that worked with them made them rich. The same group of people could have been in another state and done just as well. The people in California that made people successful are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks and Keith Rabois of the area. VC money is the king maker. In the Bay Area it all started wi…

I’m not sure how to respond but no their success comes from being in Silicon Valley at the right time and developing relationships within this ecosystem. So no I disagree that if Rabois was somehow not in Silicon Valley that he’d be just as successful and wealthy as he is now.

And I’m speaking about his investments. Cutting a check is not “hard work”. You could argue Musk is different because he’s actually the CEO of the his company.