One impression I got of San Jose was that it IS the sticks. Climate is nice, but culturally it is about as exciting as Omaha (no offense to Nebraska meant).
I live in SF but was down in SJ recently and honestly... it's just nice suburbia with the same strip malls and everything that's copy-pasted across the US?
Am I missing something there that makes it... unique?
I absolutely agree that fins has a point, and I'm serious - if it doesn't work for you, move away. There is certainly no lack of people.
I also dislike the strip malls everywhere; I was serious about the orchards part too. I wish that I could rewind to having fewer houses and strip malls and more orchards.
But for people who like suburbia but also want to work for technology companies, it works out pretty nicely. If you take the "everything that's copy pasted across the US" and splash in world class semiconductor company HQs (in San Jose and surrounding areas, like Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, etc), you get San Jose. Seems sorta unique to me, but I won't try too hard to sell it to anyone else who disagrees.
Actually, just did., and being 1700 miles away from SJ already feel much better.
I guess if you move to SJ from some hamlet 3 hours outside of Cheyenne, it's probably exciting. When I got there from Chicago, I couldn't believe that people actually might think it is a great place to live. Other than some career considerations, it's really a bland suburbia with nothing exciting about it.
