Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#61

Post by teaearlgraycold »

duped wrote: post #53
mint2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ that dystopian hellhole where the only positive quality of life is the weather.” Eesh that’s laying in on thick. SF is clearly not your cup of tea but no need for this type of hyperbole. I happen to enjoy the Bay Area, and S.F. in particular. People have different things they are interested in. You wouldn’t want me to hyperbolically rant on about how many other areas of the country are concrete mcdonaldified wastel…

I mean the point was to be hyperbolic, but "concrete mcdonaldified" is just a notch below the SFBA. There's a kind of northern Californian exceptionalism that reeks of people who have never traveled to the other 49 states. Or even within California. I've lived in a number of different places in the country and the Bay Area is hands down the worst, and it always baffled me how many people that lived there thought it w…

Did you know the Bay Area isn’t just SF?

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#62

Post by bevekspldnw »

andsoitis wrote: post #42
bevekspldnw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, Pittsburgh PA checks all those boxes with a fraction of cost of living and crime. Also, way way way more artists - because they can afford to live there. The art scene in the bay is actually really bad.

> The art scene in the bay is actually really bad. The only cities in the US with a superior art scene than San Francisco are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and maybe Chicago. Washington DC, Houston, Marfa, Pittsburg, and Santa Fe lag behind San Francisco.

And where, exactly, do all these bay area artists live?

The other cities all have some sort of semi livable areas for artists, SF has nothing to offer in that regards.

Likewise, people in South Bay lack the sophistication to appreciate anything other than a vanity license plate on a sport car.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#63

Post by SkyPuncher »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #57
SkyPuncher wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had to move for my wife's job a bunch. I've had a very good career, entirely outside of the Bay Area. That being said, I essentially have no connections or network in the Bay Area. I've worked for companies where most of my peers are not in the Bay Area. This puts me at a huge disadvantage for continuing to level my career. I'm largely subject to the whims of remote. While COVID dramatically increased the number…

Who else did a doubletake when reading this post

Oh, that last line does read confusingly. Sounds like I’m saying I left the Bay Area.

I just left my job. I don’t look forward to finding another remote one when I start looking again.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#64

Post by bevekspldnw »

moron4hire wrote: post #36
bevekspldnw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, Pittsburgh PA checks all those boxes with a fraction of cost of living and crime. Also, way way way more artists - because they can afford to live there. The art scene in the bay is actually really bad.

I can see that about Pittsburgh. My wife did college there, and we've visited a few times. It's got the right mix of tech and working class, I think. That's what I miss about Philadelphia. Actually, probably the only thing I miss, because there are a lot of problems in Philly, too. But the indie hacker scene in Philly was amazing. We had a lot of intermingled circles of entrepreneurs, hackers, and artists . If you wa…

DC is pretty upright in general, whereas I believe Philly is a very loose place.

Philly definitely has more of a creative class than DC, but there’s still things happening in DC.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#65

Post by mint2 »

duped wrote: post #53
mint2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ that dystopian hellhole where the only positive quality of life is the weather.” Eesh that’s laying in on thick. SF is clearly not your cup of tea but no need for this type of hyperbole. I happen to enjoy the Bay Area, and S.F. in particular. People have different things they are interested in. You wouldn’t want me to hyperbolically rant on about how many other areas of the country are concrete mcdonaldified wastel…

I mean the point was to be hyperbolic, but "concrete mcdonaldified" is just a notch below the SFBA. There's a kind of northern Californian exceptionalism that reeks of people who have never traveled to the other 49 states. Or even within California. I've lived in a number of different places in the country and the Bay Area is hands down the worst, and it always baffled me how many people that lived there thought it w…

“ There's a kind of northern Californian exceptionalism that reeks of people who have never traveled to the other 49 states. Or even within California”

This statement seems snidely directed and presumptuously inaccurate. And almost intentionally so as the viewership is biased towards tech salaries I.e. plenty of ability to travel.

I’d say it’s strange that it needs mentioning that there are places that exist outside the financial district/soma in SF and the bay, but it’s not actually strange if the only thing one thinks about said areas and neighborhoods outside the financial district is that they are the undesirable wildfire zone.

grass is always greener on the other side, and its Going to be a rude awakening if fire in distant hills is one’s notion of bad weather events.

Also fire isn’t just a CA thing anymore. A neighborhood in CO was wiped out, NY was blanketed in smoke. Hurricanes are making the Florida home instance market collapses. That’s just scratching the surface.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#66

Post by bevekspldnw »

okdood64 wrote: post #50
bevekspldnw wrote: post #32

If you want to work for a big aimless Megacorp, or one of their pets (Anthropic, OpenAi, etc), sure come to Silicon Valley. Make damn sure you get a nice cut of equity on top of the salary. Otherwise, the cost of living is ample reason to stay away.

> big aimless Megacorp, or one of their pets (Anthropic, OpenAi, etc) What's other US city that has a concentration of tech companies that, in your opinion, aren't aimless as you so described?

I didn’t say there are any. If you want to clear $1M/year enshittifying the last remains of the internet this is Mecca.

There’s truly no other place you can have a pick of such a wide variety of social parasites to work for.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#67

Post by jjav »

lolinder wrote: post #8

Possibly unpopular opinion: there was always plenty of room for individuals to have a fulfilling tech career outside of the Bay Area, and those opportunities have if anything grown in recent years. Bay Area folks always talk like all the opportunities are concentrated there but that's never really been true and will just be less and less true as VC money dries up. I'm sure some of it depends on what you're trying to…

> ~180k of the nation's ~1650k software developers in 2023

Software is certainly everywhere in every industry and thus every city, town and village (eating the world as the saying goes). No need to be in SV to work in software.

The kind of jobs used to be very different in SV. Here you didn't just work on software development, you worked in legendary tech companies. HP (back when that was a good word), Sun, SGI, Netscape and many thousands smaller but equally exciting tech shops.

Things have changed though. Now there aren't many actual tech companies in SV. Of all the big names, only Apple is a tech company. The others are either advertising or social nonsense or movies or sales. They use tech but don't sell tech, so they are not tech companies.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#68

Post by jjav »

duped wrote: post #53
mint2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ that dystopian hellhole where the only positive quality of life is the weather.” Eesh that’s laying in on thick. SF is clearly not your cup of tea but no need for this type of hyperbole. I happen to enjoy the Bay Area, and S.F. in particular. People have different things they are interested in. You wouldn’t want me to hyperbolically rant on about how many other areas of the country are concrete mcdonaldified wastel…

I mean the point was to be hyperbolic, but "concrete mcdonaldified" is just a notch below the SFBA. There's a kind of northern Californian exceptionalism that reeks of people who have never traveled to the other 49 states. Or even within California. I've lived in a number of different places in the country and the Bay Area is hands down the worst, and it always baffled me how many people that lived there thought it w…

> I'm sorry that most places you don't need to worry about stepping over needles and human excrement in the streets.

SF isn't the Bay Area. Traditionally SF wasn't considered part of Silicon Valley at all (these days depends who you talk to and when and where they got immersed here).

> I've lived in a number of different places in the country and the Bay Area is hands down the worst

I somewhat don't actually like the Bay Area TBH. Every few years I look into leaving. I go through all possible options and their pros and cons and, depressingly, every time I find that Silicon Valley is still the best place in the US.

It's not any one thing, but I have not found any place that is either ok or reasonably good about everything without having any terrible deal-breakers.

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#69

Post by jjav »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #63
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who else did a doubletake when reading this post

Oh, that last line does read confusingly. Sounds like I’m saying I left the Bay Area. I just left my job. I don’t look forward to finding another remote one when I start looking again.

I took a handful of years off to be home with the young kid, what a wonderful experience. Getting back to work later wasn't hard.

What I did, and do recommend, is to do a little bit of consulting. I rarely did more than a few hours a week (and on some months nothing). But having a consulting company and a few real customers meant that companies saw me as legitimately self-employed (and I was, even if very low hours) instead of unemployed.

(Did it make a difference? I don't know. But can't hurt.)

Re: Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?

#70

Post by jjav »

bevekspldnw wrote: post #30
lobsterthief wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described a lot of cities in the US though

Exactly, Pittsburgh PA checks all those boxes with a fraction of cost of living and crime. Also, way way way more artists - because they can afford to live there. The art scene in the bay is actually really bad.

> Pittsburgh

The weather though..

I like Pittsburgh (CMU alumni here), but only a few weeks a year.

Post reply on HN