There's a lot of advantages to working in tech in Los Angeles.
- If you do need to meet with people in the bay area, it's a short flight. You can even do a day trip, flying up in the morning & flying back in the evening. (It's a long day, but worth it if you have a family.) I do that probably 1-2 times a month.
- Being in the same time zone as the bay area is big boon as well.
- There's a fairly solid tech community in LA. We've hosted various meetups at the Google LA office and always gotten fairly solid attendance, from a pretty wide range audience.
- In a similar vein, we've also done things like hosting art walks on the campus & so on.
- The weather is pretty great year-round.
- It's easy to escape the tech bubble. In fact, most people you meet are not in tech. I actually find that pretty helpful to understand better how various technical issues are perceived by the non-technical public.
- There's a growing "maker" culture, with make spaces popping up. There are also events like Glow (http://glowsantamonica.org/) which fuse the tech & arts.
- The people here are actually pretty great & down to earth, yes, even the "Hollywood" types. I'm friends with the screenwriter of an ongoing movie franchise and the creator of fairly popular TV series. I knew both before there work became popular. Yes, they're very rich. No, they have not had major personality changes. No, they're not assholes. In fact, until you visit their houses, you'd think they were just regular guys.
That said, no place is perfect. We share some of the same housing pains at the bay area (esp. on the westside). Likewise, homelessness is a significant problem in parts of the city, including places like Venice.
ObRecuriting:
We're also looking to add great people to our office.
- If you do need to meet with people in the bay area, it's a short flight. You can even do a day trip, flying up in the morning & flying back in the evening. (It's a long day, but worth it if you have a family.) I do that probably 1-2 times a month.
- Being in the same time zone as the bay area is big boon as well.
- There's a fairly solid tech community in LA. We've hosted various meetups at the Google LA office and always gotten fairly solid attendance, from a pretty wide range audience.
- In a similar vein, we've also done things like hosting art walks on the campus & so on.
- The weather is pretty great year-round.
- It's easy to escape the tech bubble. In fact, most people you meet are not in tech. I actually find that pretty helpful to understand better how various technical issues are perceived by the non-technical public.
- There's a growing "maker" culture, with make spaces popping up. There are also events like Glow (http://glowsantamonica.org/) which fuse the tech & arts.
- The people here are actually pretty great & down to earth, yes, even the "Hollywood" types. I'm friends with the screenwriter of an ongoing movie franchise and the creator of fairly popular TV series. I knew both before there work became popular. Yes, they're very rich. No, they have not had major personality changes. No, they're not assholes. In fact, until you visit their houses, you'd think they were just regular guys.
That said, no place is perfect. We share some of the same housing pains at the bay area (esp. on the westside). Likewise, homelessness is a significant problem in parts of the city, including places like Venice.
ObRecuriting:
We're also looking to add great people to our office.
https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/los-angeles/