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The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

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Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#31

Post by jacques_chester »

When all you have is a slightly upgraded monkey brain, everything looks like a status play.

Edit: Apparently humour needs to come with captions now.

This is a play on the "hammer/nail" truism, observing that folk love to frame things as X vs Y zero-sum games. Possibly because of the human fondness for associating the status value of markers (places, brands) with the status value of our own selves. Thus arguments over NYC vs SF or iOS vs Android or Facebook vs Google or Node.js vs Go are not really about X vs Y at all. They are about establishing status in a troupe of great apes.

Indeed, this edited text is about status.

Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#32

Post by hkmurakami »

berberous wrote: post #27
jboggan wrote: post #5

Meanwhile Silicon Beach soldiers on and the weather is looking mighty fine this time of year . . .

What's the tech scene out there like? It's 30 degrees here in NY :(

Lots of media/content space companies from what I've gathered in the few months living here.

Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#33

Post by hkmurakami »

swang wrote: post #24
eshvk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am assuming I am missing the sarcasm or you don't live in San Francisco. We have barely a month of continuous sunshine and most of it is not during summer time. It is fog, fog and more fog. Edit: nvm, I didn't know what Silicon Beach stands for. LA obviously has way better climes than SF.

"Silicon Beach" is in LA

Santa Monica to be exact. It's really quite a nice place I must admit, despite being a SV lifer.

Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#34

Post by mikeg8 »

I really like the idea behind the takeaways and can imagine some truth to these observations... but it's hard for me to know how true it really is based on the OP's one week trip. Maybe the OP was lucky and just walked into a welcoming and diverse co-working space.

Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#35

Post by jacques_chester »

jbarrec wrote: post #6
seiji wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can picture west coast internet tech as a heat map. SF has a big solid color blob. About 20 miles south, Palo Alto is smaller and half as dark. About 10 miles south, Mountain View is a little larger and darker than Palo Alto. There are little blobs of heat map down by San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. There's a little dollop of color up at Portland. There's a half-SF color sized blob in…

This was very helpful. I plan on visiting SF sometime very soon. I want to be sure to hit Palo Alto, and Mountain View while I'm there!

I visited a few weeks ago. It reminded me of Perth (where I currently live). The actual urban area is quite small and all the rest is spread out and connected by freeways. Palo Alto, Mountain View etc -- all 45 minutes to an hour's drive from SF in non-rush-hour conditions.

Edit: when you can, take the 280. It's a little less direct but it's a lot prettier.

Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#36

Post by argonaut »

jamesmcbennett wrote: post #12

David Karp agrees with you “you’d have to be out of your mind to live in Palo Alto.” http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/david-karp-is-...

As someone who lived in Palo Alto, yep. But if you're well-off and looking to start a family, Palo Alto is perfect.

Re: The Ongoing Battle: NY vs. SF Tech Scene

#38

Post by carriemelissa »

mikeg8 wrote: post #34

I really like the idea behind the takeaways and can imagine some truth to these observations... but it's hard for me to know how true it really is based on the OP's one week trip. Maybe the OP was lucky and just walked into a welcoming and diverse co-working space.

Hi Mike, I'm the writer. I totally agree-- one week is not enough time to make sweeping generalizations. Though I did spend a ton of time talking to everyone I met in tech about what they thought of the "scene" and our differences-- people from Stack Exchange, Skillshare, and a few other startups I admire. I just found the atmosphere so incredibly different from the get-go.

Also, yes, I was lucky to be in a great co-working space (New Work City). I'm sure they're not ALL like that. Just as in SF, there are "bright spots" and "meh spots".

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