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What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

jasonevanish.com

301–310 of 573 posts

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#301

Y'all are trippin about the cost of living. I make $26,000 a year and do great in San Francisco. You can be lazy or live cheap here, but you can't do both.

Where in San Francisco? It's my understanding that rent continues to go up in basically every part of the city, and it's even incredibly expensive outside the city.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA has some of the worst road surfaces I've seen anywhere , even on the freeways. On the flip side, though, I suspect the US has more than 5x the roads despite only having 5x our population.

Have you ever been to the northeast? NY and MA have far worse roads.

Maybe inside NYC or Boston city limits, but not in rural NY or MA and certainly not on the freeways. PA, on the other hand... you don't drive through PA in the summer without hitting at least one section of freeway that's become a parking lot because of road construction.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You CAN do tech anywhere, just as you CAN be a banker outside of NYC or an actor outside of LA. Doesn't mean it's the most efficient or effective way. I have lots of respect for people who choose to live in other parts of the world but to suggest that there's not much difference between living in SF or Austin for someone interested in starting or working for a successful technology firm is inaccurate. I don't count f…

Those analogies aren't made equal. There is nothing more equalizing than your ability to sell software to random strangers over the internet. It truly can be done from anywhere and potentially in a more efficient way than in SF.

Selling software over the internet to strangers is only a very small part of what "doing tech" is. Like I said, you could "act" in a local volunteer theater in Nebraska but to say you can "be an actor" anywhere is inaccurate.

If you want to grow beyond a 1-5 person shop, if you want to build incredible software that is used by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, you need a critical mass of great engineers, designers, marketers, etc working together.

Sure virtual teams are possible but just ask Jason Evanish (OP) about how Kissmetrics went in the reverse direction - from virtual to in-person and how that's transformed their business for the better.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#304
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTH, I thought eating out in SF was both cheaper and higher quality than where I live now (San Diego).

No way, last time I went to SF it was $20 for two burritos. Compare to $10 at Roberto's in Mission Beach, and they don't put sour cream in the carne asada...

What? What neighborhood were you in? $10 for a burrito is outrageous. I never pay more than $7, anywhere. What kind of burritos were these?

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The City" refers to the core of whatever urban area you're in. It's meaningless outside of your local frame of reference. The only place in the US that has a halfway legitimate claim universal ownership of that name is NYC and that's tenuous at best.

If you read more carefully, I said people from the Bay Area call SF "The City". I didn't say it was the universal name for SF, just for the people in the area.

Sure, but if you read more carefully, you'd understand the context for the rest of the entire conversation is national, if not North American.

You can't expect everyone to switch context on your whim simply because you want to.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same goes w/ NYC. I have been here for a while now and have met so many young girls following Sex in the City dream, which invariably turned out badly.

Agreed. I just moved here from Tucson, and there's virtually no way I'd be here if not for the fact that I'm living with a medical resident in an apartment subsidized by her hospital. Given a choice among SF, NYC, and Seattle, and I'd choose Seattle: It has much of what makes the first two desirable, but at 60% of the cost. BTW, to the extent that you want to make cities like SF and NYC more affordable, favor the rem…

Having moved from SF to Seattle, I just want to say that Seattle is terrible, and you should warn everybody you know to stay away.

;)

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#307

> I have no idea how anyone who isn’t working in a high tech role that pays an above average salary can live here. I wondered that too. Anyone care to share how to get by with a non-tech salary in the bay area?

Rent control. A lot of people are living/stuck in apartments and paying much, much less in rent. The high rent only applies to new people moving in, and I'd suspect that less new non-tech people are moving in these days.

How is rent control like that legal?

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#309
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me angry when privileged people don't demonstrate compassion. OK, but where do you see a lack of compassion? I think you read too much into the "zombie" reference.

Compassion generally means feeling another person's pain. I don't think that you can use negative, objectifying language and feel another person's pain at the same time. For example, consider: (1) "Just outside of my expensive hotel, there were all these drug-addicted homeless people that couldn't even walk properly. Life must be pretty difficult for them." vs. (2) "Just outside of my expensive hotel, there were all…

Man, text sucks for conveying meaning

(3) I find it strange that there is such poverty next to such wealth and that people consider it acceptable. I feel as though I've woken up in a zombie movie, but everyone else is just carrying on with their day, like no big deal.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling people crack-heads and shambling zombies is pejorative. You don't casually use words like fag, dyke, tranny, bitch, ho, nigger, Indian (for native / aboriginal), and kyke, right? If you want a name, say "drug-addicted homeless person". We're talking about the most badly abused people in our society and you and the author are simply abusing them more with these words. Surprise, they aren't there to say anythin…

> If you want a name, say "drug-addicted homeless person". Fair enough. > If I called you a zombie for just blindly going along with the crackhead term that the author used, you would be offended, right? Nope, I really wouldn't. But, that's probably because I'm a privileged Half-Blackfrican-Canadian with a 150 IQ. If you said I didn't act black enough, or said I was a bad programmer, then I'd be insulted. > Are the t…

Yeah, I jumped to conclusions. Thanks for taking the high road. I don't know why I get so upset about the plight of homeless people. I think I also hate the zombie meme. And, I used to call people crackheads too, so maybe I'm just annoyed with myself for that.

When I was in Toronto, I found Jane & Finch to be a bit of a shock because suddenly there were all these pejorative pejoratives pejorativing.

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