I moved here ~2 years ago to join an early stage startup and while its "not what is used to be"[1] I have personally benefited a lot from being exposed to the business and engineering culture here. I'm starting my own company now and have access to much more networking events and people who "get it" than I think I could have access to if I lived anywhere else. I haven't though so its hard to say.
There is an incredible amount of tacit knowledge in this city that is hard to really internalize until you are actually here and living through it. I think programs like https://www.siltahouse.com/home take a great advantage of these things.
There's a lot of counter intuitive things about early stage that you can't really convey in a blog post, or you may not even believe until you see it yourself up close from people. The open minded attitudes and culture around risk is something that you can really internalize when you are around other people who give you the correct social proof.
Is this all things you can get other places? Sure! It may not matter as much as it did 10 years ago, but you will have a hard time not getting a positive experience out of living, working, or building in the Bay Area.
[1] people have said this since the beginning of time about everything anyways
> The open minded attitudes and culture around risk is something that you can really internalize when you are around other people who give you the correct social proof.
Never lived in the Bay Area, but even when Bay Area people visit or show up in my career orbit, the difference is pretty massive.
Especially when compared to Canadians on risk taking. Bay Area will spend a week to try something. Canadians will take a few months to consider it.
Even observing from afar, it is pretty evident why Canadians tend to lose.
And this blown up to the scale of an entire country is why Canada is suffering so much today. On every metric of measurement they are going down because the ability to take risks is simply missing in the country.
It's also because the many Canadian risk-takers moved to the Bay Area for the concentration of talent and high pay. It's easy to fly down with $50 and an offer letter to work anywhere you want for 3 years (indefinitely renewable) as a software engineer on TN status. Then you can take all the time you need to win the H-1B lottery, or just petition I-485 directly off TN (additional risks apply petitioning directly from nonimmigrant status, this is not immigration advice, ask an attorney, etc).
Not OP but I'm a Canadian who follows the news so I'll pitch in. Canada is suffering a few things right now. Definitely a housing crisis, which seems to be everywhere in the Anglosphere but I'm pretty sure we have it the worst.
So Canadians like to spend too much for housing, live credit and thus don't invest. Why do they do that and does that matter? Well, we do that mainly because house appreciation isn't taxed as income (risk aversion in action) and it does matter because it crowds out investment in things businesses use to make money.
Forthly, I'm sure you're aware that the USA is deeply in debt and that the higher interest rates to combat inflation are pinching the ability of governments to operate. What you may not be aware of is that our Central Bank does whatever the Federal Reserve does in terms of rates about 70% of the time. If they did something different, bond traders would likely be able to destroy our currency. So we are trapped right now, hoping inflation ends real soon.
Lastly, to paraphrase a Mexican saying:Canada is far from God and too close to the United States. Our best and brightest leave to make 30% more in America, where the language and culture is very similar. We have been watching American television our entire lives. We don't have a market of 350 million people to sell to, and out government protected oligopolies are not able to compete in the USA. Our banks are making a push, but that's likely to be regional In America and not national.
Personally, I've also noticed that because there are basically 4 companies to work for in any vertical, and there are fewer tier 1 cities to work in in Canada, middle management here is mostly concerned about avoiding mistakes rather than competing and excellence.
But I don't really know America, it seems like it's a hyper competitive place where you don't get to take your vacation time, and heaven help you if you really need a doctor and you are poor. Every country sucks in its own way.
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 accomplish in life, but since you didn't specify I'll answer for myself (someone who just wants to do work I enjoy for a really solid upper-middle-class paycheck and retire early)—no, you don't need to be in the Bay Area.
EDIT: To give some concrete numbers, San Jose and San Francisco represented ~180k of the nation's ~1650k software developers in 2023 [0]. That's ~10% of all US-based software developers and ~0.6% of all software developers in the world [1].
Moving to the Bay Area was the best thing I've ever done for myself financially. The network of companies, developers, and investors/advisers (in good times) is unparalleled and enough to make you a career if you can hack it, and give you the exposure to people to mentor you and teach you how to hack it.
Moving away from the Bay Area was the second best thing I've ever done for myself financially, because once you have the skills and network there's not much gains to be had by staying in that dystopian hellhole where the only positive quality of life is the weather.
“ 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 wastelands. Or whatever place you moved to, some people would rant about how bad it is.
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 was the peak of American living. I'm sorry that most places you don't need to worry about stepping over needles and human excrement in the streets. But there are some pretty mountains that catch on fire only every couple of years, so I guess it's alright?
“ 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.
While this also feels hyperbolic, I noticed this attitude while living in Northern California myself. But I saw that exceptionalism state-wide, and most especially with young people. The first time I saw a notable break from that attitude was during 2020 pandemic when moving to Austin, TX became de jour (even though many returned).
The irony that people would leave a large, wealthy state full of exceptionalist attitudes for a similarly large, wealthy, exceptionalist state was not lost on me!
But I maintain close personal and business ties to CA and my networks there and won’t live long term more than a days drive away. Maybe I’m part of the problem.
> 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.
I'm a Bay Area native. Grew up in San Jose and took my first paid tech job in 1999. I left CA after 30 years and with the exception of Tahoe and a few people, I can't find anything to miss.
Care to share what you consider "deal-breakers" because I've found parity for less money, pretty much everywhere I looked.
> Care to share what you consider "deal-breakers" because I've found parity for less money, pretty much everywhere I looked.
Well that's going to be very personal preference so not sure if my criteria is useful to anyone else. But for me I must be within ~2hr drive of the ocean, which limits me to coastal areas. And I won't tolerate any below freezing weather nor days above 100F. And I need the area to have sufficient concentration of tech work that changing jobs (for both me & partner) without having to move houses is pretty easy.
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 of remote positions, it also exponentially increased competition for those positions.
I recently left to be a stay-at-home-dad, but I'm dreading the day I attempt to get back into the workforce. I just don't really see it being feasible.
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.)
No one has ever said that 100% of software engineers need to be in the Bay Area. Yes there are plenty of people living elsewhere who have had fulfilling careers in the industry. Yet it is undeniable that – just like being an actor in LA or an investment banker in New York – your opportunities for job search, networking, career growth etc. are significantly higher by being where the ecosystem is concentrated.
> Yet it is undeniable that – just like being an actor in LA or an investment banker in New York
This is what I object to: the comparison to acting or investment banking tends to exaggerate the centralization of tech jobs.
If you want to be in a film and aren't in LA then you don't really want to be in a film, because a solid majority of the jobs are there. I imagine the same is true for investment banking and New York.
San Jose and San Francisco, on the other hand, represented ~180k of the nation's ~1650k software developers in 2023 [0]. That's ~10% of all US-based software developers and about 0.6% of all software developers in the world [1]. Not a tiny percentage, but nowhere close to Hollywood's dominance in film.
Most programmers are $90k/year code monkeys. The $400k+/year jobs are very heavily concentrated in a small number of tech hubs, and mostly in the bay, and that’s the relevant statistic that should inform your decision making if you want to make that type of money.
And this is the condescending attitude that makes the 99.4% of us who aren't overpaid Silicon Valley types resent the valley.
According to the BLS stats above the median salary for a software engineer is $130k, which is nearly double the median household income in the USA and more than enough to enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle in most areas of the US.
But sure, feel free to look down on those of us who choose to stop optimizing for wealth after realizing we already are earning in the top 10%.
The problem is there's also alot of competition ... if your'e not in say, the top 5% then the Bay Area can be a real wash ... you really need to be making $150k+ in order for it to be worth it in general, or have some other reason to be there (e.g. family)
> ~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.
Founding a tech startup and getting VC funding? Working at a FAANG or tech unicorn? Maxing your compensation? Easily job hopping? Being part of large social or professional networks centered around tech? Working on the bleeding edge of the industry? Yes to all of these.
Working a software engineering job that will pay significantly better than the median salary in the area and let you have a good standard of living and a good overall life? No, if you have adequate skill you can achieve that anywhere in the world.
I would continue living in the Bay Area even if I changed my career. I love the vibe and culture. Oakland First Friday is a fun street fair. The multiple rode gardens in about every city are fantastic. I lived an eight minute walk from the Oakland garden during the pan and I was there every day. SF is one of a small number of cities that almost every musical act will play when they tour. And there are lots of art galleries. If the tech scene is the only draw for you, there are still a lot of reasons it’s a great area. And there are so many beautiful trails to hike that are just a short drive away.
If you wanna buy a house with a yard and the above doesn’t draw you, it’s probably not for you.
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.
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 wanted to get something done and make it a cool, weird thing along the way, you just had to show up at the hackerspace with some parts and beer.
I'm in the DC area now, since I got married 10 years ago. Nothing like that here. Lots of extremely intelligent people, but no desire to Just Make Things. Everyone's got their career plan, retirement plan, home ownership plan. And none of it involves just hanging out and fucking around with a soldering iron.
100% agree, just saying there’s more art and other amenities than people realize. Also, one of the genuinely friendliest places I’ve ever lived.
The weather is bad enough that I consider it basically uninhabitable if you have seasonal depression. South Bay is a cultural wasteland but god damn the weather is 10/10.
The biggest drawback beyond the weather is the coke/steel plants regularly put shit in the air far in excess of EPA guidelines and the water supply is about two steps above Flint in quality.
Overall, PGH is amazing if you can live with the climate - but if you can’t, you can’t.
I've been in tech for almost 15 years and never lived in the bay. My pay puts me in the top ~1% of U.S. compensation. My city is around 1.5 million metro population.
I've worked for prestigious, recognizable, tech companies and local no-name companies.
As long as you're in a metro area with at least a million or two people, there'll be enough software engineering and data center business to go around.
Most of my teams over the last few years have all been geo-distributed, anyways, so its much less common for everyone to even be in the same place, anyways, even if you live in the bay area.
Paul Graham’s advice: it still matters to be in Bay Area as a founder because you are the average of your 5 closest friends. And in Bay Area your 5 closest founder friends are much more likely to be successful (possibly very successful) and that happening much less in any other city.
Bay Area isn’t all that. Plenty of homeless and people barely getting by. Even founders working on the next jank app barely staying afloat of crazy rent.
Successful is a weird definition. Most people in Bay Area, like the rest of the world are in the cycle of making ends meet.
If you have great founder friends, great. But it’s not a given from the law of averages.
It is a disfunctional city, and continues to be successful despite being disfunctional.
Matter for what? You can find super interesting communities of all different kinds of people and interests in cities all around the world. I think the communities in Bay Area lean more tech, more intentional living, more left; certainly if you want to hang out with some of the best people doing ai, you will find a bunch of those people there.
New York is an amazing spot because there’s just so much more density and diversity that there’s a bazillion more niche communities doing all sorts of stuff, including tech scenes, tech-art stuff, whatever you want.
You need to decide what you’re looking for, and if you can find it wherever you already are.
Just my random opinion... It probably matters more if you're looking for venture capital, or if you want to work for one of the top (and Bay Area-based) companies in the field. Although a lot of major AI companies (including OpenAI) are in the Bay Area.
In general I think it's limiting if you confine your job search to one area. (After all, your odds double if you try two different locations.) And there are other large tech cities -- Seattle, New York, etc.
There is also the possibility of a telecommuting position -- though more of those tend to be "hydrid" than 100% remote. Still, more of those than there were five years ago.
At least from my experience job searching, Seattle does not have the startup ecosystem that the Bay has. Not even close. I'm sure if you want to work in aerospace or military contracting then Seattle's a great option for startup jobs. But otherwise you're locked into Big Tech (something I'll never go back to).
Came here to say this. It's definitely not the advantage it used to be for an employee given how commonplace remote is now. Most of the advantages of being there are for founders and investors.
If you work on the tech side of finance (banking or hedge funds) then you would be much better off in being:
- NYC (still the hub)
- Chicago (although that's declining in my opinion)
- South Carolina (lots of banking tech jobs there)
- Austin, TX (similar to SC above)
- Miami (crypto friendly and a large hedge fund just moved its HQ there)
It can matter for future job prospects. You being at least somewhat physically available to make in-person appearances at least sometimes without it being a big deal is appealing to many employers.
This comment reads as if the only tech jobs that exist are in the Bay Area which is obviously not the case. Most tech jobs in the US are somewhere else.
You are absolutely right. Although it does depend on who you want to work for, the biggest tech companies are all in The Bay, with some in alternative US tech hubs like Seattle, NYC, or Austin (haha, Texas isn't for everyone).
All the "prestigious" large tech companies will also have offices in half a dozen (or more) other US cities. And most of them still allow remote work especially for senior folks. The only benefit I see to being in the Bay Area is if you want your entire career to be Employee #1 of newly-VC-funded startups, not because of the VC funding necessarily but everyone who is trying to get that funding spends at least some time in SF.
It’s not a binary factor, but being in a tier-1 city makes it substantially easier to get good jobs.
It doesn’t mean you have to move to the Bay Area, nor does it mean you can’t find a great job outside of a tier 1 city (Seattle, NYC, etc). However, the amount of opportunity is drastically different.
Great question, seems a bit difficult to gather a non-biased (if that exists) opinion online - be it on reddit or hackernews.
I am debating moving from another country to it to be closer to executives on my company (L1 possibly green card), but still unsure, I make very good money where I am and would make very good money in Bay Area. But my life is already pretty settled on a big tech company..
From reading online, doesn't look like the best place to raise a family, and costs are obscene even for high paid employees. Traffic also feels like would be a big negative impact on my life if I moved.
I lived for 30 years in the Bay Area. Lots of job and consulting opportunities. Fabulous people. Tons of culture and funky places. I grew lots of roses and a few veggies even in my small lots. Way multicultural. My daughter learned hula, and is revisiting that as a grownup. Attend universities or work at one. I did, and met Nobel Prize winners. Plenty to see. The ocean is gorgeous and close by.
Moved away, and now deer eat everything nonmetallic, 110 degree summers and at times, a couple of feet of snow. 12 miles to downtown and 50 miles to an Indian or Thai restaurant, Whole Foods, and the VA medical facility.
Would love to move back and reinvent the enshittified web. Will gladly leave the snow shovel, chainsaws and bear spray behind.
I move from London to the Bay Area 5 years ago, specially to get immersed in the “Silicon Valley” culture.
The differences seemed small initially, but they add up. I find people are bolder - less risk adverse. The energy is about 4x London, the scale 10x (the USA market is 10x more valuable vs the UK: 5x the population worth 2x the dollars). Genuine success is important, you cannot arse about pretending to work (like MANY Brits do).
It was a move to a much worse work-life balance for me.
The downsides are significant, lack of quality art and culture. You earn 2x or 3x but everything from cheese to housing is 2x to 3x more expensive. The Bay Area is geographically isolated, no more weekend tries to Paris or Berlin. You’ve got Hawaii and LA (a 8h drive to a city uglier, more polluted and dirty than Delhi). Skiing is Tahoe at $160/day, whereas London gives you access to dozen of much better resorts at a fraction of the price. Tahoe was especially disappointing.
I drove through SF last week and there was only one billboard that wasn’t about a GenAI company selling a CRM system.
Completely agree. Moved from Cupertino about 8 years ago to central London. The pace, work ethic, ambition/drive is in a completely different league despite London being the best option in this part of the world.
Nevertheless, it's safer and more diverse here. The people you meet seem to have more interesting conversations in general.
Being poorer also keeps us humble. "Hungry dogs run faster"
As an outsider, it seems there are many cities with a variety of opportunities. Maybe even some remote opportunities too. Even cities with terrible tech markets (Philly) have some opportunities. It sounds like other areas of CA, WA, NY, VA, and TX have great opportunities, with several other states having some decent ones.
I’m here and grew up here but I don’t really have friends or belong to a startup ecosystem. I just do my job and then go home. Idk how to take advantage of the area.
Bay Are is better for money, progression, network, capital, and all things related to big tech and startups.
It also gets boring. Everything is now way more expensive. Disposable income gets consumed way faster now than before. There's not much diversity compared to other metropolitan areas that American expats have moved to.
Make filthy money there first, then live the life you want elsewhere.
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.
As for SF: Most of the OGs left a while ago, it's basically like a post-Palo Alto now, a lot of AI startups, and a mecca for recent grads to keep feeling like they're still in college except substitute AI startup for school. They even look a lot like students, plus the typical SF activities: Biking The Wiggle, people running in the Panhandle, sunny days at Dolores, weekends in Napa.
On the entrepreneurial side, it's like these WeWork single-founder startups from the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Canada, NY) who are doing everything from crypto bro stuff to trying to build tech for acquire-hire, flying through engineers and designers to do so. On the enterprise side it's mostly companies servicing all these: Rippling, WeWork, Vercel, cloud providers, payment providers, Salesforce.
The entire Bay Area is getting calmer and more neighborhood-like: The peninsula and East Bay seem nicer than ever. A lot of SF people moved to Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and towns like Redwood City are really shaping up into lovely suburbs. Where I live (Upper Haight, SF) the old school skateboard/pizza/weed/fashion vibe is coming back, the Dead Heads are not a very strong influence anymore but there are some, kinda feels like a little 90s pocket here, but we lost a lot of live music and a lot of culture. The whole city seems to have lost a lot of music, restaurants, and entertainment - it's overall pretty boring right now. There's more spontaneous live music in Santa Cruz or peninsula. There's a pretty strong homeowner and gardening vibe in a lot of neighborhoods of SF, the Slow Streets thing is making it feel more suburby in areas. Bernal is stuck up beyond belief, just like before but multiply it, it's gotten more sophisticated, same homeowners up there as before, Good Life still there, remodeled but the same basically. Noe is strange, the babies are no longer babies but now giant 10 year olds, feels like an urban kid-ran neighborhood over there - strong cul-de-sac family vibes. More surfing and skimboarding at beaches than I remember from 10+ years ago, more action sports in general - skateparks have improved. Bike lanes and roads have improved, overall crime is lower and things are cleaner all over the Bay Area except for the classic bad spots of East Bay.
I've lived here for most of my life so it's hard to compare it to other places, I would say it's maturing and improving and I expect the West Coast in general to fill out like the East Coast over the next 100 years, so I take that into consideration with the overall growth trend. It's still very much a place of building and construction and growth. Though as I say this I've seen more "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs on buildings than ever before within SF - I think the surrounding areas are growing more than the city, the city is overall somewhat boring and quiet but I love it.
I was in half a dozen SV companies, mostly startups but a couple big ones, between 1985 and 2004 when I moved away, so I have no idea what it is like now. But since you asked "did it ever really matter," here is my experience. I interviewed for my first job when I was wrapping up college. Two weeks after arriving for that job in Sunnyvale, they announced layoffs, so I had to interview again. Luckily, there were hundreds of companies within 15 minutes who were doing similar work, and found employment without interruption. Since then I have never had to really apply for a job again, and I've never been unemployed.
Back then, one recruiter or another called me about once every three weeks about some opportunity or other. People I worked with who had moved on would call to see if I was interested to join them. Or if I thought it was time to move on, there were many dozens of former coworkers I could call for leads. Those interviews were perfunctory -- that contact had already sold me to their boss, so it was really more about convincing me to join their company.
In 2004 I moved to Austin and things have been very different. I've never had a single recruiter call, and if I did decide to change jobs, I would have far fewer options than when I lived in SV. I'm nearing retirement age so I don't expect to ever interview again.
Speaking for those of us who were born and raised here, please don't come. We have enough. Nobody who has been here for any reasonable period actually left.
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There is an incredible amount of tacit knowledge in this city that is hard to really internalize until you are actually here and living through it. I think programs like https://www.siltahouse.com/home take a great advantage of these things.
There's a lot of counter intuitive things about early stage that you can't really convey in a blog post, or you may not even believe until you see it yourself up close from people. The open minded attitudes and culture around risk is something that you can really internalize when you are around other people who give you the correct social proof.
Is this all things you can get other places? Sure! It may not matter as much as it did 10 years ago, but you will have a hard time not getting a positive experience out of living, working, or building in the Bay Area.
[1] people have said this since the beginning of time about everything anyways