I don't know when Peak California will come, but I'm fairly certain it will happen at some point, and this opinion article actually does a great job at summarizing my opinion as to why in its very last sentence:
"Californians will end up like the landed gentry in interwar England. Lovely houses, illustrious history, and no conceivable way to pay their bills."
Why do tech companies flock to California (LA/SF)? I often hear people credit the great technical universities. But that can't be, because most of the actual workers at these companies didn't go to Bay Area or even California universities [1]. If they're willing to move from their home to California for work, it's safe to assume they're willing to move from their home to almost anywhere else for work. It's not due to cheap housing or even available housing. It's not due to the great commute into work. It's not due to the low cost of living. The only argument I hear is that tech companies move to SF/LA because lots of tech workers are there, and lots of tech workers are there because lots of tech companies are there.
So if there's nothing holding technology to SF/LA, when does it become a competitive advantage to have your offices anywhere but California? At some point it will. And it will be long overdue.
It’s really quite simple; Silicon Valley is maybe the one place in which I have ever found nearly everyone I meet has a “pay it forward” attitude. It is infectious, and it means that as a “no name” startup founder, you have nearly infinite access to advice and capital, as long as you are convincing enough and tell a good story. There is no immediate expectation of return. I spent most of my life living in NYC, and I originally started Tinfoil in Boston (and went to school at MIT). Both cities are “startup hubs,” but the same attitude doesn’t exist. Boston was particularly bad about “what’s in it for me?” being the common theme of any conversation.
The upshot is that now I volunteer my time often, and for free, to help others who are just starting out. I cannot predict who will be the next Google, but I enjoy helping smart founders, and I enjoy giving back in the same way I was given to.
This categorically doesn't fit my experience here in Boston. The overwhelming majority of the people I know professionally are eager to help however they can.
I would caveat that with the note that there is rather less appreciation of bullshitters, so startups with a lot of wank to them might have a harder time being taken seriously. But if you're serious, and you're nice, people will absolutely fall all over themselves to do you a solid.
I should add that the valley doesn’t have much of an appetite for bullshitters either, despite what the media would have you believe. Mistakes happen, because there’s a lot more money here, but by and large bullshitters do not get helped or funded.
Theranos, Juicero, Ubeam, Y combinator flying motorbike, Airware, Jawbone, pretty much any "AI" or even machine learning company that isn't overtly a consulting firm, pretty much any autonomous vehicle startup that isn't a mapping company.... Most of the companies which have "succeeded" in the post-2008 landscape have been pretty feeble; it's not like Uber or AirBnB are tech companies. They're phone apps that enable people to defy taxi and hotel laws.
FWIIW I've known Byrne for years, and was shocked when he moved to the Bay Area.
Like I said, mistakes happen. Investors in the valley are willing to take larger risks, and by virtue of there being more money, there will be more mistakes. There are mistakes in Boston too. I don’t know the statistics, but I would bet it’s proportional, though perhaps not because the risk appetite is lower.
Twilio, Stripe, Pure Storage, Nutanix, Slack, Dropbox, Box, SpaceX...
Some of these companies could never have started in Boston, because finding capital would have been impossible. It isn’t always technological advantage that wins, but UX or biz model, or any number of other things related to execution.
I think that would depend a lot on how you define "bullshitters".
Outright knowing scams? I'd agree with you.
Startups with no plausible business model, a bunch of buzzwords and hopes and dreams and no clear elucidation of why anyone would become their customer? Seemingly endless fields of those in the valley.
YC's latest batch has a "drop-in replacement" for WordPress that is actually a rewrite-your-app headless CMS with little differentiation from every other headless CMS and a "don't worry, you don't need to know how to code to automate crypto trading, we definitely aren't watching for which models work!"
Bullshit abounds. And YC is supposed to be the smart-and-decent money.
TBH, one of the really nice things about living around here is that if I take a meeting with a funded company they almost certainly hit at least some bar of seriousness. All successful companies? Definitely not, but there is a lot less chaff for me to filter through.
You seem to be equating “high risk” with bullshit. That’s not the case - the appetite for risk is higher here, that’s true. But it’s not like companies can just stand up and have money thrown at them; due diligence is real, though mistakes do happen.
No. I'm saying they're bullshitters (and ones with dishonest marketing, to boot--go look at the CosmicJS Show HN and tell me that it doesn't make the part of you that cares about honesty start itching).
You don't have to be running a scam to be a bullshitter. But you do have to have an undeserved and unwarranted sort of presentation, and you likely don't have much cattle to go with that hat.
In my experience, the only bullshitters who are successful have knowledge in key domains anyways. Running a company is hard, and you have engineers who think it's just math.
There are pockets. At MIT, as a student, it was definitely very pay-it-forward. But try starting a company in Boston and getting investment, or introductions, or do any sort of networking. It's literally impossible unless you have some way of scratching their back. I have heard this time and time again from founders that moved from Boston to the valley, and I have experienced it firsthand with my company.
Again I think you're overplaying this. Most of my network has never worked with me and likely would never work for me. But I don't have a particularly hard time getting in touch with anybody I'd like to.
(And if anyone who's reading this would like to chat--well, email's in my profile. Don't be shy.)
The difference between GPL and BSD-like, to me , is that GPL says "what's in it for me?" Whereas BSD-like is "here you go take this for free, I may or may not got anything back for giving you my contribution."
More like "What's in it for the (end) USER?" What better way is there for a developer to pay it forward than to pass on all the rights they got (freedom to modify and inspect the software) to the end-user?
As a UK company founder, that spent a year in SF I wholeheartedly agree. London is getting a little better though but it's more of a cultural shift and will take time.
> Why do tech companies flock to California (LA/SF)?
1. California has laws surrounding non-compete, making it easier to poach from the Fairchild Semis, Hewlitt Packards, Intels, Sun Microsystems and Googles of the era.
2. It's easier to recruit out of Michigan than into it. California wisely keeps its snow in one place: Tahoe.
3. Diversity. As you point out, there's a ton of H1-B workers, and SF and LA have sizeable preexisting communities. It's just easier to be an immigrant or hyphenated-American in world class metro areas that can support a variety of ethnic and cultural clustering.
4. Public transit. Depressingly, the bay area still has better public transit than most other cities. Yes, the big companies still run coaches in the bay area, but that works in part because of density you won't see in cheaper, lower cost metros. And if you're recruiting internationally, the ability to commute to work without a drivers license or car kinda matters.
5. Access to money. There's a decent number of banks in SF's Financial district -- Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab are headquartered here. VISA is nearby in Foster City, and there's a number of VCs on Sand Hill Road you won't find in other cities.
3. Neither SF nor LA are particularly more diverse than many other major metro cities. SF has a lot of Asians (SF is 53% white and 35% Asian) and LA has a lot of Hispanics...but Atlanta has a lot of Black Americans (53%) and Dallas and Houston have large populations of Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites. Miami is over 70% Hispanic. NYC may be more diverse than any of them.
> _It's just easier to be an immigrant or hyphenated-American in world class metro areas that can support a variety of ethnic and cultural clustering._
The fact that there aren't as many african-americans in the bay area (outside of a handful of locales), doesn't make the GP's point invalid.
I'm an immigrant in SF, and there are few places in the US where I would feel remotely as comfortable. Even being "white" (latin american of southern european ascent) I have a noticeable accent. That accent has triggered abuse by an elderly woman right after the past presidential elections in an ice cream shop in Hayes Valley, SF. And that is without going into the countless cases of "involuntary micro-agressions" ("oh, we don't mean you guys", "you're one of the good ones", etc.).
Outside of the bay area the landscape very quickly changes to white picket fences with two large pick up trucks and white crosses in the lawn, towns with multiple churches of different christian denominations. All of this within an hour of driving from SF. I wouldn't feel at home, and likely not be accepted as part of the community in places like this.
Because there are so many immigrants in the bay area, that gives exposure to the native-born citizenry making them less likely to treat immigrants like the feared "other", as well as immigrants treating other immigrants of different origin decently, for the most part. I think these points are what the GP was referring to. The problem of lack of systematic racism and unequal opportunities for african-americans are still a big problem in the US as a whole, and in the bay area as well, but that doesn't immediately affects the entirety of the immigrant population.
OP was talking about major metro areas and the cities I mentioned are major metros with all the pros and cons that implies.
At any rate, you should really try exploring and getting outside of the Silicon Valley bubble if you think the rest of the U.S. is just a bunch of racists ready to shout offensive things to you.
Even in rural areas in Texas and Florida, big portions of the population are Hispanic. It's not unusual at all. In many Texas honky tonks, you'll find quite a few Hispanics. Some of the top rodeo stars are Mexican and Brazilian. In fact, most of Southwestern culture, from cuisine to music to dance to fashion, is a blend of cultural elements from Mexican, German, Czech, and Pole immigrants.
So far, the place I've been shouted/told offensive things by have been in the bay area for the most part, but it might also be because I'm "white".
I realize now that when I said "outside of the bay area" I didn't make it clear that I was talking about California in particular. People from outside the US, and even some inside the US too, have this image of California that is a pastiche of cliches, where the Golden Gate bridge is next to Venice Beach and the Central Valley doesn't exist. I've travelled throughout many rural areas in the US and have been treated in a lovely way. I remember a recent trip where my wife and I stopped for a quick snack in a rural bar, where we struck a conversation with the people working there were lovely. At the same time, on the walls there were plenty of "american patriot" paraphernalia in the vein of "we say merry christmas here, and if that offends you fuck you". That makes it harder to feel welcomed.
> At the same time, on the walls there were plenty of "american patriot" paraphernalia in the vein of "we say merry christmas here, and if that offends you fuck you". That makes it harder to feel welcomed.
Why should that make you feel unwelcome?
I'm also an immigrant, and have spent a decent amount of time in rural America, and my point of view is that it's wrong to hold Americans to a different standard than you would people from whatever country you're from. My family is from Bangladesh. If there were people going around trying to remove "Eid Mubarak" from the public discourse, there would be a total shit storm. 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas--tolerance for immigrants does not mean that people don't get to publicly celebrate their own culture, their religious traditions, etc.
> _it's wrong to hold Americans to a different standard than you would people from whatever country you're from_
You have a point. The culture I grew up in has its own share of terrible things that _I didn't even notice_ until I traveled and lived in other countries. Which is why I critique much of my own culture as much as I'll critique parts of american culture.
Having lived in other countries I not only wouldn't be able to go back (because I find some pervasive things of the culture repulsive and unlikely to change any time soon), but it has also made it easier to notice the cliched patterns of hatred towards the "other", the same things that are said of mexicans in the US are said of the polish in the UK, people from some arab countries in France, the turks in The Netherlands (although they are far more "polite" about it), etc.
> _ If there were people going around trying to remove "Eid Mubarak" from the public discourse, there would be a total shit storm. 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas--tolerance for immigrants does not mean that people don't get to publicly celebrate their own culture, their religious traditions, etc._
Sure, there are plenty of sensitive subjects that can put you in the bad side of a culture, but the "Merry Christmas" crowd is the same as "Guns, God & Country" crowd which is in many occasions the "racism doesn't exist" crowd. I used that sign as an example because it's the one I remembered the most vividly, but it wasn't the _only_ sign.
> Having lived in other countries I not only wouldn't be able to go back (because I find some pervasive things of the culture repulsive and unlikely to change any time soon), but it has also made it easier to notice the cliched patterns of hatred towards the "other", the same things that are said of mexicans in the US are said of the polish in the UK, people from some arab countries in France, the turks in The Netherlands (although they are far more "polite" about it), etc.
That's an odd set of examples. The countries you named are just about the least racist places on the planet. I'm sure you can hear some racist things about Bangladeshis/Pakistanis in the U.K., but nothing compared to what you'd hear about various groups in Bangladesh or Pakistan! (I’ve lived in the US 30 years, and almost all the racism I’ve ever witnessed was when other Asian people would be like “oh it’s just us Asians here, let me tell you how I really feel about [people].”)
> Sure, there are plenty of sensitive subjects that can put you in the bad side of a culture, but the "Merry Christmas" crowd is the same as "Guns, God & Country" crowd which is in many occasions the "racism doesn't exist" crowd. I used that sign as an example because it's the one I remembered the most vividly, but it wasn't the _only_ sign.
Even the "guns, god & country" crowd in the U.S. is far more welcoming and tolerant than most people in the rest of the world. In the U.S., we fight over whether English should be the official language. In France, few people question French as the official language. (And can you even imagine suggesting in France that kids should learn Arabic in schools to accommodate immigrants? But that's very common in the U.S. with Spanish.) And the French are incredibly tolerant compared to Bangladeshis. Even among the "gods, guns & country" crowd I'm more welcomed (as a brown guy with a beard) than a white American would ever be welcomed into Bangladeshi society.
Agree, despite what many people say (and the fact that it could always be better), the US and the west are some of the most welcoming and friendly places in the world
>I’ve lived in the US 30 years, and almost all the racism I’ve ever witnessed was when other Asian people would be like “oh it’s just us Asians here, let me tell you how I really feel about [people].”
Your personal experience just doesn't square up with mine.
I lived in the US for 15 years and definitely got racist comments hurled at me. More so than my time in India and Sri Lanka.
Having said that, I do agree that in general, American's are fairly welcoming and tolerant. But people in South Asia are as well!
> than a white American would ever be welcomed into Bangladeshi society.
Never been there, but I do know that white Americans would be well received in many of the South Asian cities I've lived in/visited. They may not be treated the same way a local would but they would be accommodated and welcomed.
> but it has also made it easier to notice the cliched patterns of hatred towards the "other"
Perhaps it isn't "hatred towards the other" but rather love for their own citizens who share a similar cultural background, upbringing, and values...especially when "the other" comes off as ungrateful and in some cases even complains that the host country isn't doing more to make them feel more at home in a place that isn't their home...
> Sure, there are plenty of sensitive subjects that can put you in the bad side of a culture, but the "Merry Christmas" crowd is the same as "Guns, God & Country" crowd which is in many occasions the "racism doesn't exist" crowd
> Perhaps it isn't "hatred towards the other" but rather love for their own citizens who share a similar cultural background, upbringing, and values.
I make a distinction between patriotism and nationalism, which gets conflated quite often. Criticizing something is something only done when wanting the target of criticism to be better.
> especially when "the other" comes off as ungrateful and in some cases even complains that the host country isn't doing more to make them feel more at home in a place that isn't their home...
What is the appropriate level of gratefulness to be accepted? What's the threshold to be considered part of the "host" society? When can I consider the place I chosen to live in and have my friends in "home"?
> This is a very biased view.
As stated, it is biased, stereotypical and cliched. There is a group of people that inhabit the center of that Venn diagram, the size of which I do not know.
I think the social fabric of the US is more complex than you're making it out to be. I'm an atheist with liberal Californian views on most social issues, but I also happen to be pro gun rights and grew up celebrating Christmas. It really pisses me off when overly PC weasels complain about how wishing people a Merry Christmas is non inclusive, so I think that sign is great. Point is most people don't fit the stereotypes that well once you dig a little bit and it's best not to assume malice in the absence of very strong evidence.
I think it’s important to put the “war on Christmas” in context. We are at the tail end of a long period of removing religion from the public sphere, something that has happened more aggressively in the US than in the rest of the world. (Many European countries, after all, still have state-supported churches!) One segment of society has decided that freedom of religion and an inclusive society means freedom from religion, and has been very successful pushing that view in courts. Thus, removal of nativity scenes from public grounds, restrictions on school sponsorship of religious activities, restrictions of state funding of religious-affiliated groups, etc. So when people are mad about “happy holidays” they’re reacting to all of that.
And “happy holidays” is a passive aggressive thing to say. 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas. When people say happy holidays, they mean merry Christmas. “Happy holidays” is a form of erasure—a refusal to acknowledge Christianity without also acknowledging other religions in the same breath.
> When people say happy holidays, they mean merry Christmas. “Happy holidays” is a form of erasure—a refusal to acknowledge Christianity without also acknowledging other religions in the same breath.
This is a bit much. I say “happy holidays” out of respect for the fact that a lot of people I know aren’t Christian, but still enjoy that time of year for whatever reason they choose, be it other religious reasons, nostalgia for family traditions they don’t believe in religiously, or just plain consumerism being fun.
>We are at the tail end of a long period of removing religion from the public sphere, something that has happened more aggressively in the US than in the rest of the world. (Many European countries, after all, still have state-supported churches!)
That's technically true, but it's misleading. Religion is much more important in public life in the US than in most of Europe. For example, this kind of thing wouldn't happen in most European countries: https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/tonights-obam...
I say this as someone who doesn't believe that what most people describe as separation of church and state is required by the constitution btw.
>And “happy holidays” is a passive aggressive thing to say. 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas. When people say happy holidays, they mean merry Christmas. “Happy holidays” is a form of erasure—a refusal to acknowledge Christianity without also acknowledging other religions in the same breath.
Happy Holidays has existed since at least the middle of the 19th century, and has been popular since the 30s--long before people cared about recognizing other religions. Trump even said it publicly fairly often over the years.
The family members I know who have a problem with the "War on Christmas" literally think that globalists are trying to force people to stop celebrating Christmas because that's what their media tells them.
Huh? Bing Crosby sang "Happy Holidays". It's a perfectly, entirely banal thing to say. I'm mystified by the emotional valence conservatives have given it --- and by the notional (and I think fictitious) concern that conservatives have that "Merry Christmas" is unsafe to say, as if every random shop you walked into in Chicago in December wouldn't greet you that way.
One thing I have thinking about recently is that there is a class of hostile behaviors which only seem to manifest online.
This is the stuff that people usually don't have the balls to say in the real world -- only when they're shielded by a computer screen.
For instance last night a friend of mine posted a photo on Facebook of the two of us being out for a drink.
A woman who I have worked with in the past immediately messaged me on Facebook and told me I looked fat in the photo. (I didn't, and I'm not.)
Wtf? I'm sure she never would have had the guts to say that in person.
I think a lot of the worst preachy PC behavior policing, like telling people it's insensitive to wish people a Merry Christmas, happens mostly online or in echo chambers. The majority of people live out their lives being reasonably restrained and trying to get along with other people, then on the Internet they turn into a dick.
Which is one reason why it can seem hostile to some people when the reaction to online anti-Christmas dickery makes it's way onto the walls of a real life restaurant.
They've never experienced said online dickery themselves, so they don't understand the context. If they happen to be the kind of person who says happy holidays, it can feel like an attack on them instead of a response to someone else.
Similarly if you walk into a restaurant and the owner has posters on the wall that all say things like "You'll never make me eat meat.", it might come across as a little hostile to you as a carnivore. Despite the fact that it's a reaction against some online troll, not you.
Also I'm absolutely certain that the reaction against the "War on Christmas" is 10,000 times larger than the actual "War on Christmas."
I had a relative tell me how nice it was to finally be able to say Merry Christmas again the Christmas after Trump was elected. Seriously? Who was stopping you? Obama said it every single year in an official White House Christmas greeting video.
> I think a lot of the worst preachy PC behavior policing, like telling people it's insensitive to wish people a Merry Christmas, happens mostly online or in echo chambers.
For what is worth, the only places I've seen this entire "merry christmas" thing being a problem has been as a backlash against corporations trying to look more inclusive by saying happy holidays in a period where there are multiple holidays being celebrated by multiple religions, but might just be my own filter bubble.
A lot of the war of Christmas is actually fake news made up by very socially conservative bad actors or newspapers trying to sell papers - the Daily Mail is one UK example
Ironically some of the Ultra hard-line puritan sects that colonised America where violently against Christmas
You gotta understand that "American paraphernalia" and patriotism are part of THEIR culture. And it's important to them. It's part of their identity as much as cultural elements of your hometown are part of yours.
Ceteris paribus, less open cultures will be less able to create entrepreneurial environments, especially cosmopolitan ones.
Patriotism and cosmopolitanism can be good friends.
Nationalism and cosmopolitanism, not so much.
The "American paraphernalia" as described seems to have a high level of nationalism versus patriotism, which is very uncomfortable for outsiders.
My current definitions of patriotism and nationalism:
Patriotism -- love of country that most benevolent outsiders could approve of and admire.
Nationalism -- love of country (or tribe, "nation") that most benevolent outsiders would disapprove of and could not admire.
They need improvement, but the examples we're discussing seem to uphold these definitions.
They also fit with Macron's claim that nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. For example, using the flag to divide instead of unite. Or using love of country to pick fights, start wars and bring destruction upon all involved.
"We say Christmas here and if you don't like it, fuck you" is clearly not a patriotic statement. It debases itself, its speakers and its object. It picks a fight and intends to create division, but it has damaged itself from the start by morally degrading itself. That's nationalism, tribalism, chauvinism. It betrays patriotism because it debases the spirit of the country which it claims to love.
A widespread "pay it forward" attitude will be exceedingly difficult in such a society, it seems.
Bending over backwards to make big displays that everyone should "feel welcomed" is just the culture of the city you're used to. And lets be honest, it's all for show. That doesn't slow down any of the social interactions which make it obvious when someone is unwelcome.
Yes and no. There is a stark difference between Texas and California (I've lived in both states).
Here's a recent story shared by a friend who moved from CA to TX: He took his son (who are Indians) and another bunch of kids, two were Indians and the rest white to a water park in Austin. One of the Indian kids cut the line and moved to the front of the line where my friend was. He asked him why did he do that and he should not cut the line; the Indian kid responded "We are Indians and we need to stick together". This is in the so called liberal oasis of Austin.
I doubt if this frequent in the Bay area; sure you can point to PC culture and all that but this story is a sobering reminder of how segregated Texas espcially when you have kids acting like this.
No offense, but the perception of the US outside of the "diversity bastions" like SF, NYC, LA, etc. has jumped the shark. People now assume that racism and hatred is rampant outside these areas, and it isn't remotely the case. Its actually quite sad and offensive (to say nothing of ironic) that such a large swath of people are at this point all but presumed to be racist until proven otherwise.
To be fair to you, the perception seems to be widespread among residents of the aforementioned mega-cities, as well as non-Americans, and is fueled by the popular media. But I would encourage you to view the idea that these parts of America are backwards and largely bigoted with the same amount of skepticism you would to anyone making sweeping claims about the supposed deficiencies of a group of "others".
I never claimed that a large swath of people are racist and live in backwater, but I seem to have implied it by using a few apparently cliched critiques that carry connotations beyond what I intended. The thesis of my original comment is "foreigners are more likely to feel at home where other foreigners live" in the US, and posited some of the possible reasons. SF
and other cities where the immigrant community is very visible aren't prejudice free, but you're less likely to be prejudiced against for being foreign, and even then it does happen. Also, there doesn't need to be a majority or even a plurality of people with racist views in an area for people that are the target of those prejudiced views to feel unwelcome. I was divorcing this from the larger discussion that the US has around diversity.
You're comparing SF to rural America. They're of course quite different.
But OP is asking about other major cities like Atlanta, Boston, Chicago etc. If you think those are anti immigrant racist homophobic etc hellholes, you might be stereotyping quite a bit yourself :)
Nowhere in my comment am I implying that Atlanta, Boston or Chicago or any other big metro areas are racist homophobic hellholes. I'm trying to lay the argument for why a place with a big immigrant population might be easier for other immigrants to feel as they belong. And the vignette about the Ice Cream shop was meant to show that even in blue, blue California, in liberal San Francisco, in trendy Hayes Valley, you can still be made to feel you're somehow "bad" through no fault of your own.
Edit: I realize now that I didn't specify when I said "outside the bay area" I meant California, as in "rural america is very close geographically to metropolitan america".
If you think Chicago doesn't have clear and well known racial conflict you've never driven across the city. SF and California is certainly not perfect but it tries to be better.
I don't know if "trying" has anything to do with it. It's much easier to be a harmonious multi-racial society when it's just rich white people and rich asian people.
Not problems that San Francisco isn't also having. People like to prop up SF as an example of inclusiveness, as if it isn't the pinnacle of gentrification. Things may feel inclusive if you are white/asian and working in tech. Ask a black or hispanic person if they feel like SF is a land of opportunity or inclusiveness.
And the rest of California is just as bad. LA somehow has a reputation for inclusiveness despite being home to some of the most serious racial conflicts and explosions of racial violence in the last century.
That California is somehow radically more inclusive than the rest of the country is a myth, but one they are exploiting very well.
Interesting perspective. I've often been tempted to work in the US, but one factor that always deterred me was the treatment of African Americans. I've generally had a very good time as a business traveller. I'm half-white and from a privileged background, so it's never been a question of access or belonging -- I've found the tech industry very welcoming. It's more one of personal safety and general disgust at how the US has never really tackled the legacy of slavery. I also find the US bone-deep assumption that "we're the best" extremely irritating -- kind of epitomized by the opening portions of this article only considering US locations.
I understand where you're coming from, but I do not intend to imply that the US or the bay area in particular are not a nice place to live. If anything, I'd find it hard to adapt to most other places, having had some of my prior personal positions jolted by points of view that I hadn't ever considered. Most people are I interact with are lovely and open minded. The scars of institutional racism are very noticeable and are uncomfortable to me, and it makes it hard to comment on some subjects when presenting a perspective that to you might look obvious (due to having seen alternatives) that go counter to the general accepted "narrative". Living in the US has been very rewarding and a good experience overall, to the point where I'd say it's the place I'd like to stay in, but no place is without trade-offs.
FYI, in SF there are also multiple churches of different christian denominations. Most of them will welcome you, doing their best to make you feel at home and accepted as part of the community. It works best if you don't treat them like the feared "other".
I did not intend to needlessly bash on religion in general, but seeing (what felt to me like) a dozen churches in a town of <500 inhabitants was very surprising.
There's more to diversity than skin color. Immigrants from other countries look for people who can speak their own language, eat the same food, worship the same gods etc, and given that the bulk of SF's immigrants (in the tech industry) come from across the Pacific, these communities are much larger in SF (33% Asian) than Atlanta (3%).
"Diversity" in this context is a politically-correct way of saying there is a large community of well-educated Indian immigrants on H1-B Visas living in Silicon Valley and working in the tech industry. Not San Francisco as much, but the South Bay (Santa Clara, Cupertino, San Jose, Sunnyvale, etc.).
Or maybe they meant the large established-long-before-tech Asian communities in Sunset & Chinatown, the Latino/African American communities in Mission-Bayview, the Eastern Europeans in Richmond, or the Italians on Russian hill, the Russians sprinkled around Goddard, or the Vietnamese community in San Jose or .... I could go on and on.
If all you do is focus on tech its really easy to miss the massive immigrant enclaves that have formed in the Bay Area and won't be driven out so easily.
Of course the Bay Area is actually diverse. But I’m skeptical that tech companies actually care about these communities. They care about close proximity to a large population of engineers.
I share your skepticism but take it a step further: can corporations actually care about something other than money? I don't think it even makes sense to anthropomorphize organizations that are governed by profit-before-all shareholders with limited liability and directors with a fiduciary duty to maximize returns.
At the end of the day, the workers the tech companies are competing for do care and that's what matters.
I think it is more about the attitudes than the numbers - there is a neophillia and xenophilia that is pro-diversity.
They don't seem to particularly care about the resulting demographics and occasionally get caught with insensitive assumptions like algorithms that fail to detect dark skinned people due to bad assumptions about how light reflects but they don't like the close-mindedness of xenophobes and homophobes.
Of those cities I've only spent time in the Bay Area and NYC, but NYC feels much more diverse than the Bay Area. The Bay Area has people of every race and ethnicity, but it feels very segregated both geographically and economically. People don't interact across ethnic lines as much (with a few prominent exceptions). In NYC, it doesn't feel like race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status are so tightly correlated.
> There's more to diversity than skin color. Immigrants from other countries look for people who can speak their own language, eat the same food, worship the same gods etc, and given that the bulk of SF's immigrants (in the tech industry) come from across the Pacific, these communities are much larger in SF (33% Asian) than Atlanta (3%).
That's always been my impression of the US. Cultures seem ridiculously segregated - voluntarily. And that applies to hobbies and interests as much as it applies to race and politics.
It's not that people don't mix, it's more that they define their identities by multiple tribal affiliations. And "tribal" doesn't just mean race, it means anything from Mac vs PC vs Linux, to frat houses, to financial traders, to progressive academics, to LARPers, to indie musicians, to YC applicants.
Plus the usual political camps.
There's a patchwork of scenes and monocultures which don't seem to have much to do with each other - which is a different and less permeable dynamic to just being interested in something, or working in some field.
Add language and religion to the list of tribal affiliations and replace racial segregation with ethnic segregation, and you have the way the US sees the rest of the West.
It seems like we're all playing the same game, just with different pieces.
Wrong diversity. All of these places are industry towns. SF is tech, LA movies, Miami tourism and trade, Texas energy and chemicals, NYC Wall St and media.
You wouldn’t start the next big startup in Houston, because who will leave a fat gig at the oil company? NYC is a little different because it’s historically more diverse from a business POV. SF is different because tech spans industries.
regarding #3 -- I kind of despise the Valley in this regard. When you are a tech firm not in the valley, inevitably you get a middle-manager type that comes in and tries to emulate what the latest hip SV firm is doing to boost your street cred. When I look around the offices I have worked at in the South, and up in D.C. in the 00's and early 2010's, we have never had a diversity "problem". There was plenty of diversity, not just male/female diversity, but also multicultural diversity, and diversity of thought and opinion(I've actually worked with some conservatives! They are real!). SV to me pushes their "we have a white male broculture" projections out, so suddenly now it's everyone's problem. Now we have to be explicit with our "diversity" initiatives, despite the fact that we were already much more "diverse" than the SV intellectual and social monoculture you have now.
Anyways, just kind of ranting, but yeah. SV's problems in tech somehow always branch out to be everyone else's problems that are in tech, at least media and high profile twitter accounts and bloggers would have you think that, but it isn't really so.
SV doesn't have a "white male" broculture problem imo. Asians are overrepresented as are Jews, compared to their makeup of the general population, both of which don't identify as white.
SV culturally has a "white male" broculture problem. When people think of tech startups, that is the image they think of.
On a different note, there are two major reasons why you might consider Asians and Jews overrepresented in SV. Jews have historically had major populations in NY, California, Florida and Massachusetts and Chicago[1]. Similarly, Asians have historically clustered in California, NY, Seattle. Asian populations have historically been much more spread out across the US, but some of the largest populations are in California, NY and Boston[2]. Additionally, Asians and Jews have high proportions of individuals working in STEM fields (doctors, engineers, etc) because if you're being discriminated against, in math/science you are either right or you are wrong whereas if you choose a liberal art field like english, there's much more room for teachers/professors to discriminate intentionally or not.
I'd be willing to bet there are more undocumented immigrants than are a part of that breakdown. Also "asian" encompasses half the world unless they are using the classification in a different way... that's pretty diverse.
It’s the network effects you mentioned. The reason to be here is because people are here.
While that doesn’t seem like something that _has_ to be in California, it is already here and that’s not something you can just move.
As for why other cities have a hard time competing, it’s the same thing. If CA is perceived as “where innovation happens” then people will look for jobs here. They won’t even look at e.g. Kansas City or Charlotte or wherever, even if there are open roles there.
It doesn’t have to be this way and probably won’t be in ten or twenty years. Especially after this wave of IPOs, SF will likely be unlivable for most. If companies can continue to raise enough money to pay equivalently higher salaries, then the boom can continue a while longer. Otherwise, the numbers don’t make sense.
Mostly weather and culture, imho. California is much more liberal and foreigner welcoming than other parts of the us. And a large part of the well educated tech force is graduating international students.
Regarding weather .. very hard to find same easy weather elsewhere in the USA. Seattle comes close .. and that’s why it’s also impacted, just to a lesser extent.
Austin is just as good 9 months out of the year, I hear.
Albuquerque NM, is every bit as good (i'm told) as the bay area, with 8 times cheaper housing. there are many more examples you can find in the US that have nearly as good weather.
Albuquerque has awesome weather,* no
significant earthquakes, gorgeous scenery (tons of movies are shot around here), fantastic cultural diversity, a decent university, great food, plenty of housing and land to build on, and low taxes and CoL.
*Albuquerque is a mile high, so its climate is much more like Denver than like Phoenix.
What's not so great are a somewhat dysfunctional and corrupt state government, second-class health care and public schools, and a high-tech community that revolves almost entirely around defense work that requires a security clearance. Many of these would be remedied if Albuquerque somehow got a significant influx of startups.
I find Austin uncomfortable in summer because of its humidity. Albuquerque is about the same temperature as Austin but because it's dry it's not uncomfortable.
You can still take advantage of the network effect and not be located in California. Reno,NV to SF via southwest is under $100 one way and the actual flight is around 90 mins or less.
It’s the network effects you mentioned. The reason to be here is because people are here.
When a scene gets hot, there's always the danger of grouthink. There is far too much groupthink here. Much of it now is even the toxic kind. "Fear is the mind-killer." However, fear is only the start, only the beachhead. Groupthink is the main body, and it's the mechanism whereby the mind-killing starts to result in real world consequences.
When a scene gets hot, and there's real money and power to be had, it also attracts the sociopaths.
You might have a hard time getting funding in Chicago. I don't see what Chicago would have to do with your getting an exit. Duo just sold to Cisco for $2.3B, and they're in Ann Arbor.
I know you’re asking earnestly, but the sad truth is the vast majority of startup founders care about the exit. Usually they also fail, unless it isn’t their main motivation, but the answer to your question is: most people who start companies.
Yeah in many cases it is "get something cool first and then leave it for somebody else to come up with a business model". Given the fleeting nature of success it makes sense to sell the first one and get enough to retire or be able to afford to lose.
Based in Colorado. Just wondering if you could expand on this.
Seems like what you are saying is no startups in Montana ever get exits - personally I think that's because startups seeking an exit end of moving to The Bay Area because of all the factors being mentioned here.
It’s the Dalton, GA effect — why do carpet companies set up their manufacturing in Dalton? Because that’s where people make carpets. To put it another way, current industrial capabilities contain historical path dependencies that are hard to replicate artificially. In the case of SV (+ Bay Area), the nexus of speculative capital, incumbent tech firms, a startup ecosystem, and top-tier technologists is basically impossible to develop artificially. While the geography of the area may expand — I’m no local, so it’s beyond me why East Bay hasn’t seen significant expansion — it’s hard to imagine SV being displaced as the center of American tech prowess.
It's a lot easier if your company is fully distributed and remote. Then you can hire anyone, from any location in the world.
It's certainly not for everyone, but more and more successful tech startups seem to be moving to that model, and many new ones are using it from the very beginning.
This requires a lot of discipline and experience managing remote teams. It’s significantly harder in a lot of ways. That doesn’t make it not worthwhile, but I’d argue you’re simply trading one set of problems for another. Whether those new problems are worth more or less is entirely dependent on your individual calculus.
> If they're willing to move from their home to California for work, it's safe to assume they're willing to move from their home to almost anywhere else for work.
Not sure. I moved to the Bay Area from Germany, and while the primary factor was of course the job that was offered to me, the nice weather and the really quite stunning landscape were a factor. I'm still pretty happy if I'm on a hilly street in SF and see the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, all that jazz. And SF itself is still quite a pretty city, despite its problems.
My first job out of College University had me relocating around the USA about every 9-12 months for about 4 years. Not constant travel, constant relocation. Living out of luggage got bad and sad real quick; I stayed in much too long. Saying "I'm done with this" once I got to California turned out to be good; now, I've lived in the same location for longer than I have since graduating College University and I honestly can't complain. I still compulsively keep boxes because of the bad habits I picked up from continuous relocation... but at this point is a separate issue.
Yes, California rent ever up and on toward morning. Yes, NIMBYs are ever up and on toward morning. Yes, all of the other "Ever Bad Stuff" the same. I don't know where my new next breaking point is, but when it's there I'll find it and I'll act on it; I'm trying really hard to get started on that now, but factors are making that difficult.
My Point: The simple fact of moving to California is not necessarily vindictive of "everyone who does this is going to move around the globe for giggles as suggested or implied". Maybe I wanted California as a destination. Maybe you wanted California as a way-station. Maybe someone born in California wants to stay here ... or move out ... and/or move back eventually.
I have a doubt regarding "You move to California, You'll move anywhere".
I had the exact same thoughts; I grew up in California, went to school here, and now work here. You can claw the Pacific Ocean from my dead, penniless hands. The vast majority of my network seems to feel similarly, even those that did not grow up here. There is a constant saying that’s get thrown around in my company at least: “I will retire in San Diego”. To us:
Seattle is too dreary, slightly too white.
Austin is way too white and you are still in Texas (state politics don’t sound like a feels good)
New York is too crowded, but in my network this is the obvious next choice: we are told stories in sf that the homelessness is better, techies are in demand and treated well, dating is better for men.
LA is where a lot of my network wants to be but companies aren’t growth oriented, we would be stuck in traffic more of our lives, which is why a lot of us left jobs in the valley. My network is primarily techies 24-32 years old, so I’d imagine “growth oriented” may mean less to us in 5-10 years.
Of course this all anecdotal but still relevant and indicative that a certain portion of people who live in California (even transplants) will not just live any where.
I went to SD and my impression:
Expected pros: weather, beach, landscape, ocean, Asian and Mexican influence
Expected cons: prices and homeless, artificial buildings, landscapes and often face/bodies
Unexpected pros:every one was super nice, Julio’s, cool airplanes
Unexpected cons: as a person who has always biked and walked. So cal is made for cars. To get from one part of town to another it seemed like in some cases it was just a hw cutting through a valley. Strip malls everywhere - the price you pay for so many options (consumer wise) seems to be paving over some of the most beautiful land on earth - additionally - the juxtaposition of all the luxury stores, boutique hipster shops w army of homeless is just depressing to look at. Not really California’s fault, but SD kind of just made me get down on humanity
haha these are all valid points from a non-californians perspective. I just laugh because as someone who lives in SF and visits SD regularly the homeless issue pales in comparison. My experience with homelessness in SD is that they will generally leave you alone, that is not the case in SF. I have had rotting milk thrown on me on my way to work before.. not a fun time. Also in terms of pricing, SD pales in comparison. So from a bay area perspective, the homelessness and the price become sorta moot points. And yes, california by and large is made for cars. The only place that I have heard people being able to be carless is SF (berkeley/oakland to a lesser extent), so for californians having a car in SD is not unexpected.
The Bay Area has some of the nicest weather and access to some of the most beautiful recreation opportunities just about anywhere (even if Silicon Valley itself is mostly meh suburban sprawl). It's hard to believe those don't have some effect. Sure, most people who move there do so for jobs, but--especially as they get a bit older--most people will try pretty hard to have a job somewhere they actually like living.
> If they're willing to move from their home to California for work, it's safe to assume they're willing to move from their home to almost anywhere else for work.
Not at all: for me personally, California was a bit of the final destination. It's the place where you have the best chance of being at the forefront of technology. And where you have the highest chance of finding your next job if the first one doesn't work out.
When I moved away from the East Coast to the Bay Area, it was already clear that it'd be hard finding another job in my field (chip design) if my current company would go under. That company has since gone under and over the past decade, a large part of our circle of friends there now lives here.
Talk about Silicon Alleys or Silicon this or that somewhere else is nothing new. I remember such articles in the nineties.
I do think things will slow down in general because of Moore's Law being close to the end. But that's going to be a problem for everyone, not just Silicon Valley.
This is a great opportunity to remind everyone that the less-known field of Economic Geography [0] exists.
If California's state government mismanages things so badly that the costs imposed by being in California exceed the network benefits things could change very quickly. Until such a day, it is likely that they will enjoy a significant advantage in producing tech stuff. Location benefits are far greater than the pundits realise, some things are nearly impossible in practice if you aren't located in a key hub for your industry.
Honestly, I have yet to see a non-compete at any tech company I've worked for. I think it's not common in the culture today. Tech workers are in high-demand, especially outside of the Bay Area. It might be more common in the financial world of NYC, not sure, but just working in enterprise SaaS software world, haven't seen it.
I have never not seen it. Non-compete and non-solicitation clauses are almost always non-negotiable and standard in employment contracts I have helped friends review, outside of CA. (Specifically TX, NY, WA, MA are the ones I’ve seen)
I have worked for or received offers from seven companies in Texas, New York, and Florida. Only one had such a clause, and that one was a small company that didn't really care about it.
Microsoft, at least used to, aggressively enforce non-competes. I worked on an enterprise product at Microsoft in the 2000s and left to go work at Google, but I could not work on Drive/Docs etc
One more condition normally, I think -- it shouldn't be relevant to your employer's business. That's a biggie, and makes it very dangerous to do any kind of programming in your own time if you work for a big company.
1.) Massachusetts recently passed a law significantly limiting non-competes
2.) I've never been able to find specific numbers, but my experience in Massachusetts is that they're far from universal. I've only had one in my career and that one was quite narrow. (That was EMC which was one of the local employers who fought hardest against the weakening of non-competes.)
I don't like non-competes and personally think the new law should have been stronger than it was. But, historically people jumped around employers like the Route 128 computer companies all the time.
I'm in Massachusetts and when I got a grunt job at an Amazon FC a few years ago I had to sign a noncompete. I don't know if it's enforceable and doubt it'd be enforced, but technically I think I'm not supposed to take a comparable job elsewhere for a year after I quit, or something like that.
In my time in MA, I worked for three separate MIT startups, one top software company and one IP law firm. The law firm was the only one that didn’t require a noncompete. One of those companies was backed by one of the loudest voices in the Boston/Cambridge VC community campaigning against such agreements. The company had me sign an updated non-compete upon closing a funding round at the same time their VC was giving public speeches denouncing noncompete agreements in MA. Until the garden leave requirement covers 100% salary, the updated provisions to MA noncompete law are toothless.
Probably due to the culture of those in HR and Legal they have gown up for generations with these one-sided agreements and just implement them with out thinking.
A few high profile sackings of HR directors or General Counsels might help.
50% garden leave isn’t ideal. A lot of people aren’t in a position to take that pay cut (along with bonuses and RSUs) to hang out for a year. OTOH it makes companies put a fair bit of skin in the game which has considerable value.
There’s already a very limited set of exemptions, although most startups definitely pay zero attention to these laws. We’re very careful about them, but most aren’t; frankly, it’s very annoying to our non-exempt employees because tracking is a pain in the ass, but them’s the laws :/
People desperately want to escape CA but have no choice because that's where the jobs are. Jobs are there because companies are there. Companies are there because it's not their problem and they don't pay the full cost of their egregious location decisions. It all comes down to supply of jobs vs supply of homes: it's desperately out of balance.
Voters think they can actually stop growth by stopping housing development. It's not the housing that brings people to CA, it's the jobs, especially jobs for immigrants and jobs for people outside of CA (in the US).
That used to be the case but it is changing now because potential employees are saying they aren't as interested in bay area because of the cost of living. I've seen more companies offering remote working arrangements. Work from home in vegas, reno, phoenix or some other small town within 1,000 miles from the bay area and then one day per month, fly into SF to attend the monthly meeting.
That's why companies like wework and regus are becoming so popular these days. I've seen a decent amount of tech companies signing deals with these companies to basically be able to offer remote working as a work benefit.
Of course, if employees don't want to use the remote working benefit then they can still live in the bay area.
California doesn't enforce non-competes so it's very easy to for employees to start a new business with little risk of being sued. Eg: you could work for Google self-driving car division, and leave and start a competing company. It happens all the time.
Of course, but the big difference is that Google can't prevent you from making a living using your skills as a technologist at a competitor, even if that competitor is your own startup.
CA has some good laws, such as regarding non competes, parental leave, sick leave, environmental laws, legal marijuana, assisted suicide. Nice weather and landscapes also help.
Many other places have similar laws, and even in the places that don't, the tech companies there typically do those things regardless of whether it's a legal requirement.
> But do they do those things because they must compete with the Californian companies that are required by law?
They do those things because they have to compete with everyone in general. If employees want parental leave and will choose the company that provides parental leave over the company that provides <savings from not providing parental leave> in additional salary, companies will offer parental leave regardless of what California requires. And likewise if employees preferred the additional salary over the parental leave, they would provide that in a place the law allows it, even if that isn't allowed in California. But tech employees frequently prefer the flexibility to the money (because the money is still pretty good regardless).
The exception to this is things like CARB where companies will design a car to meet California's fuel economy requirements, but then that model exists and can be purchased by anyone regardless of whether they live in California. If something has a fixed cost, the law in one place requires it, and that place is important enough to justify paying it to operate there, it gets companies to pay the cost. But that doesn't really apply to variable costs like employee benefits.
>So if there's nothing holding technology to SF/LA
You just stated the reason why the tech companies are there. Feedback loops are a real thing that happens.
As a result of all the tech companies being there, the tech VCs are there, the recruitment agencies are there, etc, etc. That’s just how this works. To see the original factors you’d need to look at the history of the region, but beyond a certain point these things become self sustaining.
Sure there are forces in the other direction, and some individuals or companies might find them compelling, but specialisation works.
For me personally this is the best place I could find where the environment pushes me to be better always. It’s the difference between launching something and making $8k in a week and people around you saying “Why so little? What went wrong? How can I help?” instead of “That’s not possible you must be lying”
I for one find it easier to change my environment than to fight my environment.
> Why do tech companies flock to California (LA/SF)? I often hear people credit the great technical universities. But that can't be, because most of the actual workers at these companies didn't go to Bay Area or even California universities [1].
2 flaws here:
1. The majority of those h1b workers are at like tcs Wipro and Infosys, not conventional sv companies.
2. Being close to technical universities is good if it gives you a recruiting edge, even if only some of your employees come from that school.
The question of "clustering" is an old one in economics, and also politics and public discourse. PG addressed it a few times, for example. He also write about how to create new centers, fwiw.
It's not a straightforward question, and I don't think any answer is entirely satisfying. A couple of cents though.
1¢ - Industries like tech are a cultural phenomenon, like a music industry or art industry. You can't just decide that Warsaw will have Seattle's grunge rock scene. It just grew there as a cultural outgrowth. It can't be planted elsewhere with predictable results. The thoughts and little decisions made by people are influenced by their cultural context.
2¢ - For the best (in business terms) tech companies, currently, costs like salaries mean nothing.
Twitter and FB were Twitter and FB with 1% of their current visits and employees. The extremely profitable and businesses enabled them to hire tens of thousands of people and spend tens of billions per year. We're these people necessary to the ad part if the business that employs most of them?
I suspect that they aren't. IE, if it turned out FB could only make $40bn or $8bn pa (currently making $80bn) from their site, they would manage to produce the same fb with few compromises on a much reduced budget. This isn't BMW, where operating costs and economic output (the number of cars) are tightly related to eachother.
If google or FB want to increase profit margins, they can, easily, by a lot. They would if they needed to, but they don't. Capital markets like the idea that they are reinvesting for growth and capital markets don't have any better ideas for where to invest profits anyway.
With no incentive to cut costs, why move somewhere cheaper?
I don't think the almost anywhere assumption holds for several reasons - a bad cultural climate can be a sure turn off (anti-intellecutalism and open bigotry), a "good" one can be a pleasure, and employees prefer to have plenty of alternative employers.
There are multiple reasond - security from layoffs or bad workplaces, job-hopping is the defacto way to raise salary, and it also keeps them having to compete for them some.
A middle of nowhere job sets off "it's a trap" alarm bells consciously or unconsciously as an isolating move.
That said there is a lot of range between "most expensive areas in California" and "cheap one company towns".
I suspect sprawling out to network edges would maximize benefits for costs similar to Palo Alto once being the cheap option.
I have one answer for you, the opportunities and the salaries are the greatest. Since all the great teams are in the bay, if you want to join one, you are forced to move to the bay now. It's a cycle.
> I often hear people credit the great technical universities. But that can't be, because most of the actual workers at these companies didn't go to Bay Area or even California universities [1].
Having great technical universities doesn't mean most workers will come from there. Obviously a majority of employees do not come from these schools. But a plurality? I wouldn't be surprised.
How it came to be is related to a variety of factors.
But it has incumbency in some things and will be impossible to compete with in some ways.
Better for regions to develop competencies in which they have some kind of advantage. Alberta makes some kind of specialized natural resources extraction tech. Makes sense!
Network effects matter a lot in startup world. You learn a lot about your own business by talking to other co-founders and business leaders. The lead generation is easy and talent is easily available.
Indian and Chinese immigrants also play a big role. Stuck on backlog these are cheap employees who are desperate for employment because their H1b is tied to they having a job. These people will work for 60 hours a week for a salary of 20.
Just how much ink needs to be spilled about how California and Bay Area are doomed. I have probably read a hundred article over the last 15 years predicting the demise of both, but in reality the exact opposite happens as California and Bay Area economy continue to crush the rest. The gap between SF and rest of the country when it comes to venture investment has actually grown as the cost of living has gone up. For example, in 2018, $45bn was invested in Bay Area startups whole only $1.5bn was invested in Austin and even less in Denver, Utah etc. It is not even close. Weirdly, the other fast growing tech regions are similar to California - expensive, dense, and left leaning (NYC, Boston, Seattle).
Maybe this time the prediction will be true, but I am willing to take a large bet against it. And this is because several things, but the primary reason is that California continues to overindex it's policies towards people, while other competing states overindex on business friendliness. But in the knowledge economy, a thirivng talent market is far more relevant to a business than some tax breaks. If you can't execute and be profitable, what's the point of a tax break. California optimizes for people through various mechanisms - non competes, inclusivity, diversity, environment, labor protection, safety net etc. If a place is great for people, it is great for business.
CA and Bay Area will be fine, economically speaking, but at least from my perspective we've already reached a tipping point where it's become so expensive for your average family that it's created this strange, dystopian atmosphere (in SF) where you have obscene wealth next to in-your-face poverty, there are basically no kids because no one can afford to raise families here, streets downtown are lined with human feces and used needles, $1m gets you a small 1-bedroom fixer upper in a bad area, diversity (in profession/race/ages) is extremely limited, and people are generally stretched/anxious due to cost of living.
Obscene wealth next to in your face poverty is nothing new, nor particularly special about SF. I don't deny it's a big problem, but this is pretty much what every major city wrestles with. Nor is this unique to our time period. For example, it's well documented that in Paris through as early as the 1700's through now, that there was an enormous amount of capital concentration right beside extreme poverty and >40% of the population owning net nothing. 'Dystopian' is also a very dramatic language.. Where do you live in SF? If you live in downtown or soma and only spend time there, I can see what you mean. However if you go out to richmond or sunset for example, there are a lot more families and children there.
It's different in SF. The homeless are much more "in your face" than in any other city I've been to by a long shot e.g. in NYC the homeless mostly keep to themselves and aren't very aggressive in my experience. In SF they are very aggressive, many with mental issues, talking to themselves or yelling at others, and appear to be on drugs. I've never visited a city where they are so many homeless who are simply passed out in the middle of the sidewalk on the hard ground with people in suits stepping over them downtown. It's also more "visible" because services that cater to homeless are all located downtown.
I live in Castro, but obviously like many spend a lot of time downtown for work.
Sure, there are families in the outer neighborhoods, but it's different in the sense that those are mostly families that have lived in SF for generations. Good luck trying to raise a family as a newcomer on the reported median household income for SF of ~$78k.
Agreed - there are a lot of aggressive homeless people downtown, and in berkeley as well. Some guy was cussing me out and trying to pick a fight with me the other week when I was just walking along.
Definitely true, SF really is unlivable on a median income and that is a continual frustration I have.
> it's well documented that in Paris through as early as the 1700's through now, that there was an enormous amount of capital concentration right beside extreme poverty
1700s-present France is not what comes to mind when one says the words "stable and prosperous".
What does come to mind is executing a bunch of people then spending 150yr trying to figure out the best way to replace them.
> Obscene wealth next to in your face poverty is nothing new, nor particularly special about SF.
It is common in developing/third world nations. Income inequality is a hallmark of such nations. It would seem that the United States has dropped from a first world (creditor) nation to a third world (debtor) nation. It is a fairly recent phenomenon with very real and easily explainable reasons, which the article states numerous times over.
Any decent-sized US city has its share both wealth and poverty, but most are dominated by postwar development, so the two are separated by miles of freeway rather than feet of sidewalk.
Where inequality seems worse, you are probably seeing a successful progressive effort to prevent segregation, and vice versa. When your neighbors and everyone you encounter in daily life are all in roughly the same economic shape as you, that doesn't mean you're living in an egalitarian society. Quite the opposite.
You have triggered me, so I will rant a bit about the Fallacy of Equality of All Good Things.
Let me explain:
* Fallacy 1: First/third world = Creditor/Debtor
The financial hubs are always debtor countries, because the periphery wants to accumulate their reserves. So when England was the dominant financial power it always ran a trade deficit as everyone else wanted to acquire pound-denominated assets, which is a roundabout way of saying they wanted to be creditors to the UK. This allowed consumption goods from all over the world to flow into the UK while the rest of the world used the proceeds to acquire pound claims.
When the U.S took over, everyone started accumulating dollar assets, meaning they were creditors to the US. How did they achieve this magical feat? It's pretty easy, they just made their currencies a bit undervalued relative to the currency of the core. Nations can trash their own currencies pretty easily -- there is only a political downside, but if you can convince your countrymen to tighten their belts in exchange for being a creditor nation, then all the better, especially if you really need a reserve with which to buy foreign inputs. In other cases, they were not very democratic to begin with, so it wasn't an issue.
This is also true if you study local financial flows within a country -- a major urban area will be a debtor area and the poorer, smaller region around it will be a creditor to it, which is just another way of saying money flows out of the city and consumption goods flow into it from the land around. If you compare how much a person in a city consumes per day versus how much a person in the periphery consumes, we in the core consume quite a bit more. Restaurants, bars, custom shoes, concerts, museums -- we really live it up! How can money just flow out of a city without a printing press there? Because the periphery re-invests by purchasing assets in the core, recycling the money. So if you live in a farm or small town you will have a retirement account with stock or bonds that are claims on companies in the core -- the money you save is being sent back to the core rather than being invested in some other small town -- thus the periphery is a creditor to the core. This is true for cities as well as nations. This phenomena of net trade inflows to big cities was even true of Ancient Rome and Ancient Athens, but there it was pretty obvious that rather than having the farmers invest their money in Rome stocks, they were just taxed the loot was brought into Rome. The developed urban core is always a consumption sink while the more rural periphery tightens its belt.
This does not mean that the core is third world and the periphery is first world -- it means the opposite!
* Fallacy 2: strong currency = export power.
There is a similar fallacy with being an export power and having a "strong" currency. People like to have a "strong" currency -- e.g. who prefers weakness to strength? But people also like to be net exporters, because they want to make more income selling goods to others than they spend buying goods from others. But the stronger your currency, the more expensive your product and you become a net importer. Because assets in the core are somewhat overvalued relative to the periphery that the core is a net importer. You can see this by comparing interest rates in the periphery versus the core.
But you often hear people demanding both a strong currency and being an export power. And sometimes they throw in first world and net creditor to boot. Even though these good things are the opposites of each other. You have to pick and choose -- do you want to export a lot with an artificially weak currency, or import a lot with an artificially strong currency? Do you want to be a financial hub and thus a debtor or a smaller node orbiting the hub and thus a creditor? You can pick and choose what you want, but you can't have it all.
Here endeth my rant on the fallacy of Equality of All Good Things.
> California optimizes for people through various mechanisms
Except for high personal income tax, school funding, cost of living (food costs, utility costs, etc are all heavily affected by public policy), regressive consumption taxes (like the fuel tax), high sales tax, poor public transportation, and so on.
It certainly doesn't feel like California is trying to optimize for people.
It's optimizing for long time Californian land owners, cf. Props 13, 8, 58, 60, 90, 193, 218, 39, 26.
Direct democracy has the Native Sons of the Golden West building thier economic wall around the state ten feet higher every election. I don't see any way out without federal intervention.
> I have probably read a hundred article over the last 15 years predicting the demise of both, but in reality the exact opposite happens as California and Bay Area economy continue to crush the rest.
Maybe I just wasn't paying attention before, but I've read a lot about it lately, especially in the context of New York being the next Silicon Valley. I feel like this was especially true when Amazon was considering it as a location for HQ2, but even now that it's not I keep seeing NYT articles about NYC being #2 in tech (ignoring Seattle, for example) and how it's definitely gonna surpass SV at some point because it's "a so much better place to live", has "so many more creative professionals", etc. This article doesn't say it outright, but it kinda alludes to it making NYC the primary example it compares The Bay against.
Thanks for the article links that underscores my point. Somehow businesses are always fleeing California and we have the worst business climate, while at the same time becoming the fifth largest economy of the world, home to 3 of the 5 most valuable companies in the world, and home to the next set of valuable startups.
It's worth noting that $45bn of funding in the Bay Area probably only goes as far as $15bn would in Austin. Companies are indirectly paying their employees' housing costs after all.
I'd like to see numbers by per-company and per-employee funding, adjusted for purchasing power.
It must be mentioned that SF housing prices - i.e price for median homes - are now nearing levels where regular people may never be able to pay off their mortgage. And these homes are increasing 15% in price, every year.
I love seeing all the speculation here on HackerNews about why tech companies flock to California, and especially to the Bay Area. Everyone has their own theory: access to money, the great weather, non-competes not being enforceable, great universities, the “pay it forward” attitude, immigrant diversity and tolerance, "good" public transit (as compared to other parts of the US), network effect (because the best developers, investors, and tech companies are already there), beautiful landscapes and the ocean, concentration of VCs, etc.
It reminds me of a similarly long discussion here on HN about why Americans were generally thin in the 1950s but much fatter today. Again, everyone was pretty sure of their reason, the leading theories being: fast food, food being cheaper, rise of sedentary jobs, less physical activity due to more cars & labor saving devices, wives now working outside and not cooking at home, big reduction in smoking (because it keeps you thin), more sugar in foods, more carbs in our diet, etc.
All of the theories above sound reasonable. The problem is that there is almost no way to do controlled experiments to find the true answer. And the true answer could be quite complex, like it was initially 38% factor A, 22% factor B, and the C,D, & E making up the rest, but over time it's become 5% factor A, 11% factor B, with factor D now dominating at 58%.
I'm resigned to the conclusion that we're not going to know the answer. It's a complex interaction of millions of individual decisions and interrelated changes over a period of decades in a way that's not reproducible.
It is probably first mover effect. Bay Area had silicon valley. Remember silicon? Many things involving semiconductors and electronics grew up in the Bay Area because of Fairchild and the traitorous 8. In fact, you could make the argument that the first generation of electronics businesses involving vacuum tubes were in the area as well (in Oakland). Software companies growing there happened later when the semiconductor money needed something to invest in, and computers were something semiconductor people understood.
Nobody wonders at Wall Street being a center of finance after some 18th century traders met under a buttonwood tree, nobody wonders at Hollywood continuing to be a center of film and TV production, and nobody should wonder at Bay Area being a center of software development.
I'm skeptical of any model that throws up its hands and says "this is so for a number of reasons I guess". Multifactor trends are unlikely [1], bad at explanation and prediction, and easy to fit to anything. It's better to admit you don't know than say it's a combination of N things.
Remember, most things are hard to explain until you know the truth. That doesn't mean the truth is super complicated.
For all of the talk about California’s immense wealth, most people are unaware that the state also has a higher rate of people in poverty than any other state when you correct for local cost of living and taxes.
I'd love to see some numbers that take the origins of the homeless people into account. Did these people become homeless in California or did they become homeless elsewhere and then migrated to California? The mild weather and liberal attitude make CA a lot more attractive to the homeless than many other states.
The homeless rate here is similar to that in New York, but New York has a right to shelter so far fewer sleep on the streets than in San Francisco. It's less that the mild weather makes CA more attractive, more that it lets CA governments ignore the problem.
I had not heard these statistics before but they are very informative. I live in New York but visit SF often for my job. Every time I visit I am shocked all over again at the extent of the homelessness and poverty right next to obscene levels of wealth from tech.
I always assumed New York just had fewer homeless but these statistics prove that the CA government has instead completely and utterly failed to support this population of people. In general, San Francisco seems like a terrible place to live.
OP was discussing poverty rather than homelessness; having cycled through a number of bay area cities which have a much less favorable economic situation than downtown SF/Oakland/Berkeley/San Jose/MTV/Palo Alto/etc... yes, there are serious problems with poverty in California.
Most commentors here have some kind of conceptual idea about what poverty is like, or see West Oakland town houses sometimes from BART, or have ideas shaped by homelessness in SF and occasional conversations with colleagues and friends - the reality is that there's a whole ton more people out there living on much less, and it's a different world entirely, especially when you see it in person.
In some ways it's probably less dangerous than people would imagine, but it's also shocking and nearly third world.
With great wealth comes great inequality: for the most part, California condenses all the extreme parts of the U.S. economy into one state. Unless California invests more in its public utilities (or anything that allows for an even playing field), economic inequality in a high economic region should be expected.
I would say that statement holds true for most countries. The Nordic model [1] is an exception, and why I said California should invest more in its public welfare.
California is the United States, writ large. It's not qualitatively different, it's just more so.
Or, from a slightly different standpoint, the rest of the country is California, just 20 years behind schedule.
I have lived in many different places all over the United States, including twice in California, where I have settled with my family, and it's very easy to fall into a "crazy california" narrative - especially when comparing with "sensible" places like Minnesota. But it's not true. Right this very moment in Minneapolis there is a heated, polarized debate about housing affordability and homeless services and zoning that is indistinguishable from the SFBA debate (save for the pricing numbers difference).
I'm not so sure that California is ahead of the rest of the country. The effect of the tech industry on the Bay Area's fortunes is not that unlike the effect of the auto industry on Detroit or even the textile mills on New England. Silicon Valley is just the latest iteration of a cycle that has existed for a long time.
it seems like global competition is the force that ultimately damaged both Detroit's auto industry and New England's textile mills. on the surface at least, it seems reasonable to guess that, somehow, global competition will be the force that ultimately dethrones Silicon Valley.
The "you can't offshore tech" arguments of today are basically the same "you need skilled labor to manufacture this, they can't do that in the 3rd world" arguments of decades past.
They did try to offshore tech but it failed to fully displace for various reasons.
I'm curious were there attempts at remote industrial outsourcing in the past that failed? I know that Ford attempted his own South American rubber plantation that essentially ended up in literal rebellion due to being a control freak, cultural imperialist and poor agricultural planner.
For SV's demise, I think the pattern to watch for is corporations like Toyota or Honda.
During the decades of their ascendancy, they actually understood the US consumer better than their Detroit counterparts and built cars the US consumer favored. Then they built factories in the US. Yet, they remained truly Japanese companies.
Other cities have the same problems, but are not following the same failed solutions. Another commenter posted about how Minneapolis upzoned the whole city, something unimaginable in the bay. Rent control also has little traction there.
You're right as far as blue cities/states go. But Some other cities (some red ones and some blues that are less liberals) don't stop housing from being built as much. The less rules and regulations and zoning, the more supply is created. Houstan, Dallas for instance are much more affordable.
> It’s no longer the best place in the world to start a startup.
The place with most active investors with the largest investments? The place with the biggest pool of programmers and pms and designers? The place with the best legal system to foster entrepreneurship?
Where else in the world would you get all of this? (Not even including beaches, attractive people, weather, food, top hospitals and universities, diversity, optimism, etc)
And to the author. San Francisco != all of tech in California
> The gains from the existing tech industry increasingly accrue to a) passive investors, and b) lucky landlords.
Sure, but compare that to any other industries. Tech industry is still very very mericratic. (Low startup capital, barrier to entry) Besides, every company is a tech company now
> The state government is a levered bet on tech compensation.
Why would you not want to bet on the best industry going forward? The one that eats all the other industries?
There is no shortage of people in Silicon Valley willing to work at startups, and that's why there are so many startups.
Among those people are successful FAANG employees who already made a bunch of money and feel safe trying something new, because if it doesn't work out they are not going to go broke and will probably end up back working at a FAANG.
It's hard to hire in SV because it's the most competitive talent landscape for technology in the world.
I work in recruiting (software salespeople), and this is by far the best market in the world for hiring in that niche. The talent you get here is significantly better than anywhere else. I make the analogy that it's like hiring for finance in London or New York. Outside of a global city, working at Goldman Sachs is impressive. However when you're hiring in NYC you can get much more granular - getting someone who's worked in the right team, on the right sort of deals etc.
There are plenty of actors in the world, but Hollywood is where entertainment deals are done. We'd laugh at someone trying to hire the worlds best Oil & Gas team in San Francisco. These are the big leagues.
I enjoy Silicon Valley obituaries. I've read them every time some bubble bursts, whether it was the video game bubble, the integrated circuit bubble, the dot-com bubble, or the social media bubble.
What the authors usually miss is that the things they call out as killing the Bay Area (home prices, job shifting, taxation, Etc.) have been true for at least the last 60 years. What they miss are the things that power the engine.
Those things are an at will work force, with legislative protection against non-competes, combined with wealth sharing/creation that is unlike any other place in the world.
There are more IPOs coming out this year, Lyft, Uber, and others. And already the real estate folks have said "prepare for the shock of higher prices." That is because there will likely be thousands of millionaires minted over the course of the year. And while that wealth will be distributed unevenly, some will be lucky, and others will not, once again there will be a refreshing of the 'who got rich with some big event' sorts of stories and people will "know" someone who got rich. I got to experience that when Sun went public, lots of people I knew as co-workers were now much much wealthier than I was, they were buying houses in Palo Alto and Saratoga and I thinking about private school for their kids. Sometimes, or or the other of a married pair dropped out of the workforce. And with that wealth people left the companies where they made their money and went to other companies to grow them. Some of them got to experience that IPO burst, two, three, and even four times.
You get groups of people who "self fund" their adventure/idea and work for free on some new topic. That is hard to do if you don't already have independently wealthy engineers to start with.
Think for a moment if your city was full of people in their 30's and 40's whose lifestyle and needs was fully funded by their existing wealth. Do they sit around and sip drinks on the porch? Not here they don't. They get together and start building stuff. Sometimes small things, sometimes big things. And when they do, there is no shortage of capital companies that are willing to augment their efforts in exchange for a piece of the pie. And some times that explodes again into another pile of wealth.
It is certainly a pretty unique place to hang out. And I expect that is part of why it is so hard to "replicate."
Well said. Reminds me of something I heard in some interview about what makes the valley special that really stuck with me. It goes something along the lines of:
"There's no other place quite like the valley for starting and scaling a company from the ground up. No other place in the world can even come close to the valley in terms of the sheer number and concentration of engineers, leaders, and investors who have experienced the scaling of a company from the ground up first hand. And those are the people you want by your side when starting your own company, because they can apply their learnings to help your company grow at an accelerated pace and avoid the pitfalls they encountered along the way."
It's the language of the city and the region. Walk through downtown San Francisco and you hear people talking about funding, about IPOs, about engineering, about CAC and LTV. For better and for worse, everyone is in tech here.
Something touched on with the piece, but not quite hammered nearly as much as it should have been: switching costs, which have dramatically changed in the past 10-15 years.
The initial round of California VC money came from hardware startups cashing out. Hardware is tied to the physical realm, and thus locality is important - if you need to buy leftover equipment or supplies, it's way easier to get them if you're in the neighborhood as your vendor.
The next round of software startups in the 90s through early 00's had a similar switching cost with VC funding. Though we obviously had telephones and email, we had not fully transitioned into the "remote work" mindset that allows teams to collaborate regardless of distance. It was challenging for VCs to work effectively with their founders, and for founders to work effectively with their teams - which forced teams to co-locate with founders, and founders to co-locate with VCs.
You don't need the world's best software engineers to launch a startup - you can launch something with sufficient complexity to start making money in Denver, or Austin, or Chicago, or anywhere else with a reasonable supply of engineers. And now, VCs are far more tolerant of remote founders given how easy it is to stay in communication. If all that is true, why make things more economically challenging than they need to be by trying to fight the economic headwinds of California?
Oh boy, here we go again, another article proclaiming that California is too expensive and you're better off starting your company elsewhere. California has been expensive for a very very long time, decades. Yet, every year, someone gets hopeful that this is it, this is some sign, tech is finally moving on from California. When I moved to California in 2007, startups in Austin were the next big thing. SXSW celebrated a huge number of Austin startups, and then once they grew to a larger size, they all migrated here to California and the scene seemed to evaporate overnight.
The problem these types of articles fail to grasp is that even with paying a tech worker over $200 to 500k a year, that is still an amazing return on investment. Not even considering just the FAANG companies, but all the other ones like LinkedIn and Square, Twitter and DropBox, they're raking in billions a year in revenue. They make so much raw cash, they have stock buybacks and investment arms of their companies that just invest in other things.
There are other tech cities, of course, Seattle being another hub. You don't have to pay as much for your employees and the cost of living is adjusted for that expectation. LA and NYC have a pretty decent cluster of workers as well. The problem is, you can find generalists, but once you start to need specialized engineers or roles, it gets exponentially harder and you end up creating remote offices in the Bay Area to capture that.
I'm not going to defend that it's not exhausting living here. It's hyper-competitive and the politics of "live and let live" create pockets of very seedy places in all the strange areas. Yet, some of the brightest people in the world live here doing some of the most amazing things in the world. It's super easy to find a meetup where, for example, the guest speaker invented Rust, for free, with pizza, on a random Tuesday! Other places around the world have to create these specialized conferences to make it worth their effort.
bingo. to first order it's a winner take all game. it doesn't matter how much cash the VCs need to pay to start one of these contraptions. what matters is that the contraption succeeds.
if the chance of success is 0.01% in SV, but it's 0.0000001% in Austin, it doesn't matter at all if the costs are 10 times as much in SV. VCs are not starting companies to save cash. they're starting companies to dominate an industry. so they buy the biggest guns and it doesn't matter how much they cost.
San Francisco is just...dystopian at this point. In-your-face poverty mingling with obscene wealth, human feces and used needles everywhere downtown/SoMa, decrepit 1 bedroom homes that sell for $1m, very few families/kids, and to make things worse stores that would be open til 10pm in any other city don't seem to stay open past 5-6 (at least in the Castro).
Edit: I thought it was weird for me as a single youngish male to "care" that there are kids and families in a city, but you're reminded when you go to basically any other city how much "realer" a city feels when you actually see families (moms, dads, kids, grandparents) walking around and enjoying each other's company and life in general.
It always makes me chuckle to see a work of fiction set in modern San Francisco that treats it like a normal city where normal people live. The NBC show “About a Boy” is a perfect example [0]. It’s hilarious to see just how out of touch most Americans are with what this city has become. San Francisco may have been an actual city in the past, but it’s just a filthy office park at this point.
A lot of SF feels the same as when I lived there in the 90's. I'm mostly familiar with the inner richmond and sunset areas. Most of the same restaurants and stores are still there.
I think its a good article, but I'm confused about the author's implication that the state government is consciously choosing to depend on income and capital gains tax revenues. California does depend on those taxes, but not by choice: Prop 13 made it basically impossible for property tax revenues to grow at the same rate as the economy.
I also agree with the other comments here that this author seems to think SF == Bay Area. Much of his comments about hippies and landlords conspiring make no sense in the rest of the bay, where it is actually relatively wealthy homeowners conspiring to prevent growth in order to ride the surge in home prices.
A couple years after Prop 13 was enacted in 1978, the California legislature approved of Mello-Roos Community Facilities District taxes in 1982. They exist on top of regular property taxes (they do not replace them). While I agree with your narrative that it's hard for California to raise property taxes (beyond two percent per year), CFD's help bring in new property tax revenue to ease the gap.
I've seen this article over and over through the years. I moved to Palo Alto in 1984 when all the houses were under water and people told me that I'd missed the boom. California has plenty of issues, but always muddles through them.
California's economy is more diversified and resilient than that of, say, Detroit. There's much more to the state than startups. Sure, eventually it will be superseded in some way or another, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.
I've had a few casual conversations about the collapse of California recently. In my opinion, zoning laws will be the death of San Francisco. The greed of the NIMBY's will eventually drive prices too high for anyone that didn't buy 20 years prior (i'm amazed it hasn't happened already). I've been entertaining the idea of a state putting extreme limits on zoning laws. I'm not an economic expert so i'm not sure what it would look like, but I can't help but compare to Tokyo with their ballooning population and stable cost of living.
California is fucked because normal people can’t afford to live here anymore. At least not in the Bay Area, LA, and San Diego.
In San Francisco a favorite pastime is to blame tech workers for “driving up rents” anyone who has taken economics knows prices don’t work that way. Prices go up when demand exceeds supply. We also are quite aware of WHY demand exceeds supply. 1) People keep coming here because we keep hiring, and 2) people who already live here block new housing construction. The objection we see in every community meeting is “we don’t want to change the character of our city”. I assure you, driving out your teachers, bus drivers, baristas and librarians is changing your city even worse. It leads to congestion, increased homelessness, loss of diversity. For every ten jobs we create we build two new houses. It’s not the people with new jobs that suffer.
Here’s the solution. A new state law saying if a city adds a job it also has to permit the construction of a unit of housing. Done.
I assure you if the City of Mountain View has to follow that rule, the muddy lot next to Google campus (currently zoned for hotel) would have a ten story apartment building in it next year. Why hasn’t it happened yet? Not allowed. Well who doesn’t allow it?
The city. Why won’t the city allow it? Residents don’t want new housing. Why don’t residents want new housing? A mistaken belief that blocking new housing will preserve their city. Blocking new housing will in fact destroy our communities.
We can get out of this mess, but we have to build our way out.
> Why don’t residents want new housing? A mistaken belief that blocking new housing will preserve their city.
It isn't a mistaken belief. If you got in early and own property in a place like SF then rising prices are going to be adding money to your retirement account.
Any real solution (build, build, build!) to the housing market in a place like SF would destroy a lot of value for a lot of people. Most of those people are middle-class, and the money they've stuffed in their bricks is their single biggest investment.
Of course if it all comes crashing down they'll also lose, but right now that's looking a whole lot less likely than them being able to keep riding housing bubble gravy train.
Why would it destroy value? If the area around my home develops into a booming area, some developer will want to buy my home and build something bigger on it. These low-rise buildings must be bought and replaced for the "build, build, build" to happen. The only way this could backfire for some is if the building boom starts and then the economy collapses and the boom never returns. Now you have an old house surrounded by high rises and rent is low because of the surplus that was built. That seems very unlikely though. To me the bigger threat seems to be that some other place with fewer NIMBYs will outgrow SV because of the artificial limit imposed by the NIMBYs.
Sure, some property owners will luck out in the way you're describing. Their lot will be bought out to develop a high-rise.
But it's just as likely that the lot next to them will be bought for development, and theirs will be passed over for the foreseeable future, or that the only reason anyone lives in their suburb is because of unreasonable prices where people actually want to live.
Now their property value will plateau or fall as demand for housing falls due to new development happening elsewhere.
In the long term it's likely that everyone involved will win, but many property owners just have a 10-20 year horizon before they'd like to sell, and might correctly foresee that a deregulated zoning policy might lead to a growth slump in that time frame if the supply doesn't continue to be artificially restricted.
And that is why incentivizing real estate as an investment vehicle exacerbates the housing crisis. Misaligned incentives at the local level means that heavy-handed state measures (SB 827, OP's proposal, etc.) is likely the only way out of this mess.
There's plenty of potential ways out of the mess, but pretending that the status quo is uniformly bad and just needs to be fixed isn't going to help.
The entire reason for why there's a problem is because the current state of affairs is awesome for some people (existing property owners) and bad for pretty much everyone else.
Saying it needs to be a state law is just setting up a different variant of the same intractable problem.
Who's going to care to lobby more when such a law is proposed state-wide in California? A bunch of property owners in SF/LA sitting on a million $ in assets, or potential future California residents who don't even live there because property prices are insane now?
To complete the thought, if government did allow a massive increase in housing supply and all those voters “lose” that money, the associated politicians will be gone in a heartbeat. So while the NIMBYs start this, they’re enabled by politicians in fear of their phony-baloney jobs.
It will take state level intervention. The voting population of the city of San Francisco itself has enormously outsized influence on the regional economy due to their ability to control development within the borders of the city. But they constitute nowhere near the majority of the population of the Bay Area. At some point (ideally) their state level politicians will just get steamrolled by the representatives of the rest of the state's population, and most of their power to control local development will be stripped away.
Presumably the opposition to that won't just be Bay Area NIMBYs, but anyone living in California with an interest in the state not dictating zoning policy to local municipalities.
Basically true, but I'm happy enough to let the market solve this one. California will change or it will fail.
The one thing that should perhaps be legislated is some up-front disclosure in employment offers of typical costs of living in the BA. Many prospective employees from elsewhere will not quickly realize that (absurd as it seems) you can't raise a family there on $200K/y.
Pity, since California is such a nice place weather wise. And there is the crux of the problem: people put up with this madness because there is some other non-market reason that isn't very portable (e.g. Austin has very hot summers).
An alternative/additional solution to "just built more, denser housing" is making remote work much more widely adopted. A lot of roles in software, research, etc. are very well suited for remote work.
Bay Area companies should: (1) make remote work more widespread and (2) build more offices outside of Bay Area.
Yep - I agree with the increased dense housing is needed (although I would also argue that with this construction infrastructure / public transit comes for the ride or it is a failure too), but it seems that one of the stop gaps is to promote /incentive remote at companies...
You have the right perspective on this IMO. Thinking about owning a home as an investment is foolhardy: very few people are going to get rich off an increase in their home's value, and only a few are even going to significantly increase their retirement funds after downsizing.
Houses are places to live, not investments. It's in all of our interests if they're as affordable as possible everywhere instead of pushing the equivalence of an arms race.
The irony being, of course, that California is one of the few places where your home value could rise 5-10X and your property taxes appreciate at less than inflation.
Prop 13 creates many artificial barriers to selling property and other market distortions, and folks not downsizing when they'd like to is one of the crazier ones.
The most dense cities in the world: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo even New York City should be the go to locations for tech, but they're not.
The Bay Area has two things going for it that will make it hard to replace.
1. Non-competes are unenforceable. This means that the most talented engineers like working here because they can job hop with ease where in other locales they are locked into jobs working for lousy bosses.
2. Many of the most talented venture capitalists and seed investors like living here. They like it because it's pretty, you can escape the city in no time and be in nature and it's low density. I doubt the kind of people who live in Atherton or Woodside would pick up and move so easily to L.A or Manhattan. The Bay Area with its geographical boundaries provides a pretty good integration of ultra-rich neighborhoods with the middle class workers that make up the bulk of tech's working class.
> The most dense cities in the world: Hong Kong, Singapore, even New York City should be the go to locations for tech, but they're not.
Those places have COL problems as bad or worse than the Bay Area. At least Singapore (and to a lesser extent HK) deals with it via lots of public subsidized housing.
The comment you replied to must have been edited since you replied to it.
Tokyo rents basically haven’t moved in the last 30 years and the population has added 1.5m people. If you want to work in NYC there are many, many affordable options within 1 hours commute.
The current democratic structure clearly doesn't work here. Western democracies are starting to look more and more inefficient these days. They're overwhelmed with complexity and are stuck on short-term egoism.
You'd think an article about the fate of California would mention Los Angeles, or agriculture, or anything other than the SF bay area and tech. Even the mention of the state government is a reference to the tech industry.
California is almost as big as my own country (France) and yet when people use the word it's a synonym for the bay area. Seems crazy from that perspective.
Well yeah, if you're going to sell how great California is then of course you are going to point to the place that basically puts California on the map in recent years.
> However, the current crop of big companies will still be the big tech companies in 2030 and 2040.
What’s the reasoning here? Rewinding to 1999, Microsoft is the only (then) big tech company still doing interesting things. Apple was mostly irrelevant and on the brink of collapse, Google was an academic curiousoty, and Facebook wouldn’t exist for another half decade. A lot will change in 20 years. I suppose Yahoo, Oracle, and IBM are still kicking and probably will for a long while, but they are hardly forerunners at this point.
Seems this article is not about California, but the SF Bay Area. Greater Los Angeles housing is not nearly as over priced, nor is it as dependent on the tech sector.
We've had "peak San Francisco" three times since the 1980s. Late 1980s, when the heavy industry moved out. 2001, the dot-com crash. 2008, the real estate crash. Looks more cyclical than fundamental.
Arguably, the reason why the valley was the best place for startups is due to the density of the VC economy there and the wisdom of founders who have exited startups there. Once other factors have provided enough competing negative value the only thing that is left is empty consensus (trend chasers, vanity, popularity admirers), which is healthy for marketing but is horrid for innovation.
With those things in mind if you have no problem achieving early investment and a healthy base of users/clients there is no reason to be in the valley (or any high cost market).
This is interesting but he kind of jumps all over the place; it strikes me more as a brain dump of ideas and hypotheses.
There are a few areas where he’s playing pretty fast and loose with the facts, too. For example: NYC has way more homeless people than SF, but they aren’t as visible because under city law, the city is required to provide shelter to all of them. It has nothing to do with the weather, and in that sense NYC is way nicer to its homeless than SF.
There are landlords everywhere. It’s not a uniquely California problem.
London, NYC, Hong Kong are all notoriously expensive places to live. But they are not Bay Area. I don’t get the oft repeated hatred and contempt towards landlords.
Bay Area is better than most other places in the world..more diverse..more philanthropic and inclusive. Things grow and flourish in the Bay Area. We want everyone to succeed. We rise and we rise others. That has been my experience.
But that doesn’t make sense. The reason we have prop 13 is because someone 30 years ago bought a property for a couple hundred thousand dollars and by the time they pay off the mortgage, it’s worth a few million dollars but they are retirees and can’t pay the property tax.
If prop 13 is repealed, older Californians should have to move out of state. Remember..no one makes money unless they SELL the property.
However there is room for reform with : 1. Investment property 2. second homes 3. Foreign investments in CA properties 4. Inheritance of property and tax breaks on that..5. Prop 13 repealed for commercial properties.
A retiree shouldn’t be penalized for their primary home after paying it off for 30 something years and when they are on fixed retirement incomes.
> If prop 13 is repealed, older Californians should have to move out of state. Remember..no one makes money unless they SELL the property.
Ideally nobody would have to move out of the state, and ideally any solution could be implemented gradually enough to ensure that there were cheaper housing options available nearby to minimize disruption. Regardless, please consider another perspective. A pair of retired people whose children have reached adulthood and moved out should be discouraged from continuing to own a 4 bedroom house in an urban area. There should be structural incentives to encourage them to sell their property and move to a home that is more efficient for society. Proposition 13 is a disaster for society precisely because ensuring that older Californians do not have to move is a disaster for society. Retired people no longer have jobs that they need to commute to, so the average commute time goes up when they stop working but decline to move. A younger couple with young children or perhaps planning on having children cannot move into the house. They are kept out of what is likely a quality school district, and will end up raising their children in less space and at a greater distance from institutions like museums that children benefit from visiting. Meanwhile, the government misses out on oodles and oodles of tax revenue that the next resident would be paying because our hypothetical retired couple doesn't have to pay adjusted property tax until they move. Not only does prop 13 provide no structural incentive to move, it provides a structural incentive to not move!
Not only is the subsidy on the order of billions of dollars, it's subsidizing something bad! It's as though the government was buying cigarettes in bulk and handing them out to children. Ensuring that retired people don't need to consider moving is the opposite of a good idea.
It seems to be suggesting that older Californians need to downsize and live small after they retire and don’t have to enjoy all the decades of working hard to pay mortgages so that the state can gain more taxes?
How is it a subsidy? They are not subsidized as they don’t realize value and if they realize value, it is only after they sell which means that taxes are delivered to the state coffers anyways.
Retired people should ‘move’ away and die someplace else because the taxes are necessary?
Why would anyone want to own property if this becomes the norm? There is no incentive to own property usually bought on mortgages and interest rates.
> It seems to be suggesting that older Californians need to downsize and live small after they retire and don’t have to enjoy all the decades of working hard to pay mortgages so that the state can gain more taxes?
And so that scarce resources can be efficiently utilized. It is broadly agreed among economists that the best taxes are those that encourage people making inefficient use of scarce resources to sell them to people who will make more efficient use of them. Generally the best way to do this is to levy a tax proportional to the value of the scarce resource in question. This is why a land-value tax is so strongly favored by economists. Property taxes are a tax on the negative externality of underutilization of resources, because someone who derives more use from the resource (close to work, close to schools, space to raise a family) will be more willing to spend money at a specific rate to continue owning the resource than someone who derives less use from it.
> How is it a subsidy?
They receive a tax break as long as they retain ownership of the property. Their continued ownership of the property is being subsidized. Tax incentives are a common method of distributing subsides. Consider the tax incentives associated with mortgages, retirement accounts, and college education funds.
> Retired people should ‘move’ away and die someplace else because the taxes are necessary?
Scarce resources are scarce, and their efficient utilization should be encouraged rather than discouraged by government policy. Markets are a crude but effective means of determining value. If a retired couple values continued ownership of a property as much as a younger couple looking to start a family values that property, then they will have equal willingness to pay the associated property tax.
> Why would anyone want to own property if this becomes the norm? There is no incentive to own property usually bought on mortgages and interest rates.
Are you asking why people would want to own property if property taxes existed? Property taxes are pretty common, and unsurprisingly people continue to own property even when subject to property taxes, because they derive more value each year from continuing to own the property than they pay in tax. And when that stops being the case, they sell the property.
In California, under the new funding formula, all property taxes collected for public education is redistributed based on certain metrics.
For example..if there are more children on free meals, that school gets more funds from Sacramento. If there are more students whose parents are non English speaking immigrants, the school gets a bigger share of the funds for extra teachers etc.
For example: Fremont in the Bay Area who has a higher income and educated demographic spends around $9000/student while Oakland which has a lower income demographic spends 14k/student.
So good Area = higher property taxes = good public schools is no longer valid. Good schools are in regions where affluent parents are able to send their kids to private tutoring classes. The schools have crumbling infrastructure because 85% of their school budgets go to wages and salaries.
It’s not really simple as it seems. CA is more complicated and we are one of the highest taxes in the state anyways.
Most of CA’s woes would be alleviated if we had a good public transport system. Not like the high speed rail system but even public
Infra and inter city fast public transport improvements.
We are not connected enough. The taxes are not being efficiently used for the benefit of the entire state. High Tax payers often get the least benefit. I think there is some societal responsibility for the wealthy to bear the needs of the weaker sections , but it’s veered a little too far to the left especially since it’s about virtue signaling now rather than accountability. I think the public would trust the govt if there were more transparency and accountability. My 2c.
"value isn't realized until it's sold" doesn't mean anything when you can borrow against your appreciated asset (tax free btw) to acquire more property.
If you borrow against appreciated asset, the property is considered refinanced which would mean that the property tax would be on the appreciated value of the property. This is why many people don’t refinance because even that would be a burden when one is on fixed income.
You are making an assumption that people would want to borrow against primary dwelling.
Debt and loans are not always attractive to everyone. Especially if they are older and retired. They are likely to get a reverse mortgage if they have no income or if they are on fixed income. And that’s a risky strategy to many.
That's not true. Many states explicitly protect your primary homestead. For those 65 & older they may reduce or even freeze property taxes. Usually the city/county can't evict you for unpaid property taxes either.
100% this. It also can't be emphasized enough that these property tax breaks have disproportionately benefited older, white Californians (due to both historic property ownership rates and demographics).
Edit: For the folks downvoting, well, here are a few links:
Peak California is real and this is a quite good summary of it.
One redeeming aspect not well understood, though, is the role of capital. We're temporarily in an odd age of overabundance in venture capital (overabundance relative to investable ideas and people) but in general, and pretty much at all times except for 1997 to 2000 and 2014 to 2018, the people willing and able intelligently to invest in $0 revenue / 0 progress companies with wild ideas have tended to be in just one place.
Nothing about this demands that the companies stay in California. But it means that they'll probably keep coming here to find capital being allocated by risk-loving Ph D-holders.
I have only been in the Valley for 10 years, but even I remember, in 2009, how fast the tourist capital vanished. And some pretty cool companies were founded in 2009.
When the next cyclical downturn arrives, the same determined VCs are still going to be in the same MPK and SF offices, plugging away on new ideas, while oil kingdoms and plutocrats are going to be off cleaning money in some other, hotter corner of the globe.
I wonder if it is actually the case that YC believes 150K is the necessary number to operate over the course of the program. As I recall, the chain of events was YC provided 16-20K, then Yuri Milner decided to index over all YC companies by offering an extra 150K on a no-cap/no discount note, then it became a lot easier for YC to just manage the investment themselves, then the money was rolled into the main YC investment so there wouldn’t be this weird two rounds of investment from the same investor, the latter for a TBD amount of equity. Each decision along this step had other motivations, like DST reaching more early stage companies or YC simplifying their investment, which were unrelated to how much money it takes to get through the YC program, a number which has undoubtedly gone up but probably not by 7.5X
I have always what it is about places with a mediterranean climate that causes some sort of renaissance mindset to form there - Greece (well at least a while ago), Roman empire, Italian renaissance, Silicon Valley....
On the East Coast, there are maybe two months out of the year when the weather doesn't strongly disincentivize going outside. And those months aren't in contiguous blocks - there's usually a week in January where it's nice out, and then it's crap until one afternoon in February and a randomly selected third of the days in March, and so on. I bet that has something to do with it - especially since you need cities for this stuff, and cities have to care about the weather more than suburbs, since people aren't just driving everywhere.
And, having lived in both regions, the only difference between the Northeast and the South is that the Northeast rolls fewer of these days (it still gets way too hot in the summer in Massachusetts) - but the Northeast is where most of the cities are, because a few hundred years ago, colder overall weather meant 1) you couldn't develop a primarily agricultural economy the way the cotton and tobacco belt did, but 2) you had fewer parasites and disease carriers to worry about. (It's a little harder to build major economic centers when half your population has hookworm, malaria, or both, which was true of the South until the mid-20th century.)
Lee Kuan Yew called the air conditioner the most important invention of the 20th century.
Having lived in Bethesda for a few years, I am convinced that a non-negligible fraction of our governmental dysfunction comes from the collision of formal work attire and 100% humidity swamp. Not even joking.
I developed a mildly negative opinion of Singapore and HK when I saw their brightest minds enter the finance industry and wear three piece suits in sweltering weather every single day of the year.
Never again have I seen so many successful people so determined to be uncomfortable for a majority of their workday.
One of the first great truly world power, between the 6th and 11th century, was a port in Indonesia (surprisingly). After that, Europe took the lead, with Bruges, Venice, Anvers, Genoa, Amsterdam, London. US came after that with Boston, New York, California. Asia is now taking the lead again.
The sea is a powerful ideology in itself. It brings you new goods, new ideas, change, desire to welcome strangers. It's also the place of nomadism, which was the normal way of living in almost all of human history.
How do you produce "new" stuff ? By connecting "old" stuff in a "new" way. That's exactly what ports do, and that's probably why so many great empires emerged from them.
Wow, I thought this writing was really superb. I read one of the author's other linked articles, https://medium.com/@byrnehobart/alchian-allen-and-agglomerat... , and it was the first time I read a convincing argument for the relationship between high real estate values and industry concentration in specific urban areas in the age of globalization. Fascinating read IMO.
If Bay Area and tech is a talking point. For most of the tech existence, Silicon Valley has always been the go to place. Then, it got too expensive. The next stop was sf and now even soma is crazy shit expensive. The natural progression i see is to start looking at the east bay (Hayward, Oakland..). They still are comparatively affordable. Work with the local governments where it is a win win for both. I live in Hayward and I can’t imagine there are no startups here. It is so close to the city.
In every article like this, I'm always looking for the author's orientation to place. It's important to me whether they consider the Bay Area, or any other place, an actual home, with some transcendent quality besides a collection of objectively measurable attributes. This author clearly does not.
The author is annoyed that people like him (according to him, the smart people, the good people, the people on whom the entire society and economy depends!) are treated with such disrespect. But how does this author treat the people around him?
He writes about the Bay Area like he's observing it from an alien spacecraft, as if he's entirely separate, outside of time and space. He evaluates the various objective factors of the Bay Area solely in terms of their benefit to him, and finds it wanting. And the author, with an unlimited ability to simply uproot himself, darkly insinuates that he, and all the other good, smart people like him, are going to do it, and soon.
But why should anyone care? By the author's own admission, he and his fellow good, smart people aren't meaningfully a part of the culture or the social fabric of the place. The author clearly has contempt for the people around him ("If you can afford Pacific Heights rents and rideshare everywhere you can pretend you don't live here!"). He clearly has no intention of contributing to the place. He clearly sees it as a pool of resources for extraction and nothing else.
It's clear that the author sees it this way because if this wasn't the case, he would be involved in some effort, any effort at all, to fix some of the problems that he's describing. Yes, California and the Bay Area have their problems. And our problems and our fortunes are the result of generations-long processes. Whatever comes next will be the outcome of people digging in, working to fix the problems, putting their shoulders to the wheel, and not just bailing out because moving somewhere else would maximize certain values in their personal spreadsheets.
A few people that I consider friends were doing that work before the current round of good times. They're people who've been in San Francisco back when it was considered frightening and dangerous, and the set of problems the city had were completely different than the current ones. They stuck it out. They made the city a much better place. As a result, we now have a new set of problems to fix. The cycle repeats itself.
Right now, we don't need any more people who are just looking to extract resources for themselves. We need people who are willing to engage, to become part of the social fabric of this place, and to figure out what the future looks like. So I want to enthusiastically encourage this author, everyone else who's written a functionally identical article in the last few years, and everyone on Hacker News who constantly complains about how much they hate San Francisco, to get out.
If you're among that group, and you don't leave, you're actually cheating yourself. There's likely some place in the world with which you could find the same profound, transcendent connection that I and many others have with San Francisco.
It's a tragic waste of a life to live in a place you hate, and that you have neither the commitment nor the desire to make any better. It doesn't benefit you, and it doesn't benefit the people around you whose home you hate so much. Everyone would be so much better off if you would simply show yourself the door, and find a place you can call home, for better or worse.
While I think this is a valid critique of many of the comments in this thread (including the current top one about SF being "dystopian"), I think you're being uncharitable to the author. Nowhere does he say he hates SF and is desperate to leave; though he is predicting decline if the housing and COL issues don't eventually get addressed.
Hopefully if you believe that the solutions to SF's problems are folks being positive, committed, and pitching in, you'll also agree that we need more inclusive land use policies (zoning and tax) that aren't aggressively pro-incumbent.
Your comment resonated deeply with me as it put into words something I’ve been trying to express for a while now - so thank you!
I too think that it’s odd as well as discouraging that people so often express their disdain of a place (SF seems to be the popular punching bag as of late) in the context of “What can this place do for me?”. It’s in sharp contrast from a perspective of “This is my home. I’m a part of the inherent fabric of the city. What do we all need to do together to make our home a better place and how are we falling short?”
The most worrying part of this is that when the system described in TFA crashes and burns and people flee they will not realize that it was the sum of all parts that created the system that they fled and will unwittingly attempt to enact it piece by piece wherever they relocate (see Denver, Portland, Austin, etc. for examples).
>>I’ve lived in the Midwest, on the Texas/Mexico border, and in New York, and when I moved to San Francisco I was surprised to see that anti-immigrant sentiment was quite socially-acceptable there
The author is not an immigrant as the word is commonly understood if he’s only lived in these places.
Aside from the homeless in Southern California a lot of young people are living out of vans. See Vanlife on Youtube, eventually these young couples living a Nomadic lifestyle will want to settle down and start families. Also, a lot of middle aged people are also living out of vans.
A discussion of "Peak California" without mention of freshwater?
This appears to basically be a NIMBY property values complaint by a rich person... either someone with property or who wants property under the current conditions.
maybe its silly but i think california will always attract lots of great people because the weather everywhere else fucking sucks. i did a huge road-trip across the US last year and the biggest lesson i drew from it was that california is paradise compared to the rest of the country. i never traveled as a kid, so i assumed that things were nice in other places too. seriously, i dont understand why anyone chooses to live somewhere else. other places are cheap but they also suck massively. and people who live in NY? its just as expensive over there, even more restrictive gun laws (you cant even carry a fucking taser) and the weather SUCKS. why someone would know about both places and choose NY over CA is a mystery to me.
I'll accept that chastisement, especially respecting that this is your site. But I do feel that the Bay Area vs. not discussions are as relevant to our industry as ageism, or any other criteria that causes us to judge each other unfairly. I'll seek better ways to engage in those discussions, though.
Sure, I'm not saying the article is off topic. If it were, we would demote it (or rather, it would already have been heavily flagged). The issue is simply that when people respond with shallow dismissals, especially with a provocative edge like "wouldn't touch region X with a ten foot pole", it leads to lousy discussion. Worse, in a case like this, it pours fuel on regional resentments, which unfortunately are a lot stronger than one might have hoped.
Admittedly the article set itself up for such a dismissal by making a provocative generalization about "smart people" in the first place. But commenters here need the discipline not to take the shallowest bait in a piece, but respond to the parts that are actually interesting. In a way, that's the article-scoped version of this guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
I would argue your selective enforcement of moderation is more harmful to the commentary than the original comment. This is your site, do what you want, but I really don’t think this is the comment you want to fight, considering the other pendatry, bickering and outright hate I’ve seen around here.
That's a non sequitur. If you see a worse comment that didn't get moderated, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We can't come close to reading everything that gets posted here.
If you notice bad comments that shouldn't be on HN, you can help out by flagging them (described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), or in egregious cases, emailing hn@ycombinator.com.
It is decidedly not a non sequitur. My argument is that selective moderation by you, the site owner, is worse than no moderation by you. If you go about only moderating the things you see, moderation on the platform is now directly correlated to your preferences on what you read and now open to your bias. Do you want an open discussion, or a discussion guided by you? To be clear, I'm in favor of moderation based on principles and thoroughness, but against moderation only when when it suits you.
Moreover, your tone and attitude about these things is not helpful. If you continue to dismiss people with valid points out of hand, so will the rest of the commentariat here. With great power comes great responsibility.
That argument still seems incorrect to me. The subset of posts we look at it is determined by users (flags, votes, emails, etc.) and by software. Neither of those share whatever personal preferences we may have.
Are you sure that the moderation here is so aligned with particular points of view? In my experience, most of these perceptions can be explained by people being far more likely to notice and remember the cases they dislike or disagree with. If that delta is 10x (and I think it's at least that), things are inevitably going to feel skewed.
Ah, now we are discussing my argument instead of dismissing it. Thank you for that. I think this tone is much more productive for an open conversation.
You are right that I am off if you are using tooling to assist you in moderation. From the outside, it seems arbitrary and misaligned, but I understand that it is a black box from my side.
In this particular case, I still feel like your argument is weak, but I care much more that you are grappling with my argument than anything substantive about the argument itself, so we can agree to disagree.
"Substantive" has to do with the signal/noise ratio of the original comment.
As for your last sentence, that's dismaying to hear. If you're saying it in good faith, suggestions about how to do better would be welcome. Keep in mind that it's my job to post moderation comments and try to coax people into following the site guidelines. (In case it helps, they're even more tedious to write than they are to read.)
Ah, seeing as you are a mod (I assume) that makes sense so all I can do is apologize for my response. The quick look at your comment history looked to me like all you did was jump on people for having opinions.
I still support the comment pointing out the generalisation of smart people and believe it's also fair to give a frank opinion of such arrogant assumptions without being told your opinion isn't "substantive" enough.
I'm sorry the mod thing wasn't clear. Of course we've thought about adding 'mod' tags to the relevant usernames (dang and sctb), but it somehow feels out of sync with the spirit and traditions of this place.
I guess I’m not a smart person and my friend group must be full of idiots because concensus among all of us — many of which who have lived in there — is that the Bay Area is terrible. I would never move back. The lifestyle is very hard, even if you make a lot of money, because the public transportation is insufficient to cover everything you want to do in your life. And the culture is boring and getting worse.
I can understand why Americans who have never lived in NY or a nice city outside of the US might think it’s “really hard to find any place on planet earth that’s nicer to live in and to work in”. But this attitude says more about the author than anything inherent to the Bay Area.
I was guilty of the same kind of thinking when I first moved to San Francisco - it was, at the time, worlds better than the suburban Florida environment that I'd grown up in or the other mid-sized southern cities I'd visited frequently. I fell in love immediately.
But after a couple of years, the little cracks in the armor start to show up - outside of a very narrow strip of Market St and the Mission, getting around to other parts of the region is difficult. The weather is good, but certainly not the perfect beachy warmth I was used to as a kid and got monotonous. Most people I met seemed to already have their circles of friends and they centered mostly around who worked where or what hackathons you wanted to do, and that wasn't my ideal weekend scene. Rampant, aggressive homelessness made simply walking through many neighborhoods saddening at best, actively hostile at worst. Credit where its due, I found a lot of solace riding my bike around in the Marin headlands, but I could only really do that a couple of days a week at best.
NYC, by comparison, I moved to and didn't immediately fall in love. It was huge and intimidating and I showed up in August when it was humid and moving into my 5th floor walkup was painful. It took a few months to feel comfortable with transit options and like I wasn't solely reliant on maps. But I had an easier time making friends who didn't want to code 24/7, yet still take their professional life seriously. Nightlife is waaaayyy better in NYC, and there are hundreds more options. There is still a homelessness problem, but its generally less in-your-face and less aggressive. Its still expensive, but less so than SF. Sometimes I call a car to go somewhere because the weather is bad or I'm in a hurry, but I rarely feel like there is somewhere I simply cannot get to on public transit. Its the only place I've ever lived where the longer I've been here, the more I've liked it.
SF definitely has charm, but like you and your friends, many of my friends and I who have done both find NYC to be a much better example of a functional, diverse, very livable city. I wouldn't trade my time in SF for anything else, it was valuable to a younger version of myself - but I'm happy it propelled me elsewhere.
Heh funny, I did Chicago first as well and now I'm doing SF. It was also really cool for me to be in Chicago and discover my first tech scene, now SF is a thousand times crazier.
I agree with GP, although I really want to like SF but it is hard because I've lived in nicer cities.
We've contemplated moving to NYC in the beginning, or after SF if we really don't like it, but I don't see myself living in NYC. It feels like a great big city, without the advantages of the great big cities you have in Europe or Asia.
I LOVE visiting San Fran, but i'm with you. I would never live there. I also know many people that moved from San Francisco to Utah and after they got over the huge culture shock, they absolutely loved it here.
Chicago is a melting pot of various immigrant cultures. It’s a city literally built by Irish, German, Polish, and Italian immigrants. It also has walkable neighborhoods and public transit that for most part rocks (compared to other US cities).
It's too bad the author started the article with that line.. I almost stopped reading right there. "Smart" people move here because it's relatively easy to get hired at a job that pays six figures even for the relatively inexperienced. The closing line about "lovely houses" was also a stretch. More like million dollar tract housing.
In between though, the article had a lot of interesting points.
Nope, the author is right—for many people, it's hard to find a better place for life and work than the Bay Area, and that's why so many people move here.
That's perfectly compatible with you and your friends disliking the Bay Area. For example, it's hard to find a more widely loved movie than the Godfather, yet some people dislike it, and probably argue just like you that people who like the Godfather must do it out of ignorance.
This argument doesn't look very solid here, however. Many people in the Bay Area moved in from cities and countries around the the world. I'd expect them to be less ignorant than average about life in other places. Just today at the public library I met a family from France and another one from Canada. I could myself legally move to and find work in any US state or EU country tomorrow. Yet, here we are.
At some point you need to realize that 1) liking or disliking a place is intensely personal, and 2) you don't need to seek validation for your personal choices even if they diverge from the mainstream.
> The lifestyle is very hard, even if you make a lot of money, because the public transportation is insufficient to cover everything you want to do in your life.
Public transportation is the limiting factor in determining what you want to do in your life... even if you have a lot of money???
Once I had enough money, I bought a house 20min from work, 15min from an excellent park for mountain biking, 25min from SJC and 45min from SFO.
All of that can be done by car much faster than public transportation ever could.
Whether or not this is sustainable for a large population is a completely different discussion. But your premise is flawed.
> Coming to the bay to live far from SF? What's the point?
I don't regret a second of living 5 years in NYC. And I still have one friend there who, 15 years later, still lives that same life of partying until 2am, fancy restaurants, and whatnot. It sounds very exhausting.
The vast majority of my friends back then have moved to the suburbs. Good schools for kids, a nice house in a quiet neighborhood with a garage for the minivan to drive those kids to cross country meets during the week or to go camping during the weekend in the summer and ski in the winter.
The point of living in the Bay Area but not in SF is that I can have a nice house with a large garage for my hobbies: the fumes of a laser cutter or the noise of a table saw wouldn't go well in a tiny apartment. Or that I can live close to some of the best semiconductor companies in the world, something that's not even available in SF. That, if needed, there are tons of similar companies in a radius of a few miles. Or that I can drive 15min to my local park for 45min of mountain biking in the morning and still arrive at work before 9:30am. Or the weather: I still occasionally forget a warm sweater when I go to SF in the summer.
Have you considered that people in their early thirties might have different priorities in life than those who are 50? Maybe you should?
Yeah, I don't know why anyone would tie themselves to public transit in the US if they had a decent job. US public transit is for people too old, too young, or too poor to have a car, and for people commuting into very dense areas that it is impractical (too expensive) to bring a car into.
Owning a car is expensive and a pain in the ass, walking to the station every morning is good for you, you can read/relax on a train whereas driving in traffic is a nightmare.
That's fine. But there aren't a lot of people like you, and only a few places in the US are a good fit for that kind of lifestyle. It really only works in the densest hearts of the biggest cities, like New York and Chicago, and the odd college town or retirement community.
There are reasons why 90+% of US households (and some 97% of households that include a worker) have a car.
All of the usual suggestions are too small, IMO, except Seattle (4M) which is already expensive and facing similar problems to the Bay. Austin (2M), Raleigh-Durham (2M), Denver (3M), Portland (2.5M) are not suited to compete with the Bay (8M). Baltimore-Washington (9M), Boston (7M), New York (20ishM) and San Diego (3.5M) are already very expensive. Climate isn't king, but Phoenix (4.5M) and Minneapolis (3.5M) are too uncomfortable for most people. That leaves Chicago (9.5M), Dallas (7M), Detroit (4M), Houston (6.5M) and Atlanta (6M), of which the first and last have a more mature tech sector, denser urban geography and better public transit (Atlanta's transit ridership is five times Houston's). Of the two, Chicago has much better infrastructure, but Atlanta has much nicer weather. Both are far too small currently to pose a threat to California's dominance, so I wouldn't expect to see any changes any time soon.
You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how strongly you felt when you were someplace. Name-calling rants and slurs are not allowed, regardless of which people or region you have a problem with. Please don't do it again.
California does OK with climate change. Rising ocean levels aren't a big deal, because the coast of California is mountainous. Even where it looks flat, like Venice Beach, go 3 blocks inland and you're usually 20 feet up.
San Francisco has some low-lying areas near the coast, but they're small enough and valuable enough to justify big seawalls if necessary. It's not like Florida or New Orleans, which are barely above sea level now.
Hotter is a problem, but CA isn't going to heat up to unlivable levels, like parts of India.
Yet another Medium moron that lumps lots of disparate ideas (about people) into just a handful of neatly-formed but incorrect blabs. Only in the Bay Area would "hippies" "conspire" with landlords to keep the engineers out.
I'm expecting the "tech bubble" to burst at some point. Looks at this way. Desktop and laptop market is saturated. Phone market soon. Semiconductor industry reaching its limits. Ad revenue will trend down as governments clamp down on a lot of the sketchy stuff. A lot is riding on self driving cars and machine learning. What else is new in the horizon that people really need?
There are going to be many, many more ways we utilize software and connected devices to optimize existing industures (construction, healthcare, logistics etc). Some of them will seem so obvious in retrospect, others will be exceptionally creative and thus hard to predict. We may have reached a saturation point for hardware (but even that will need constant replacing), but the ways we deploy technologies out into our economy will continue moving forward for many years to come. Tech changes, but always moves forward.
The tail of what's possible with ML is very long. We've just only picked the low-hanging fruit.
Medtech is going to be big this century, as biocompatible nanotech and the shockwaves of CRISPR reverberate through industry over the next couple decades. Not saying immortality is coming or anything, but within 20-30 years we'll probably see a slew of new therapies and products. And if anyone figures out a really good, affordable BCI, then that's another Pandora's box of possibilities.
Also, I respectfully disagree on a downward trend of ad revenue. The rise of advertorials in news outlets, product-placement-driven subscription media a la Netflix, and the whole influencer thing indicates our future will be even more fully integrated with advertisement. The per-impression cost may still fall, but look forward to the day when anyone with friends is micro-compensated in realtime for mentioning Coke at a party.
"Californians will end up like the landed gentry in interwar England. Lovely houses, illustrious history, and no conceivable way to pay their bills."
Why do tech companies flock to California (LA/SF)? I often hear people credit the great technical universities. But that can't be, because most of the actual workers at these companies didn't go to Bay Area or even California universities [1]. If they're willing to move from their home to California for work, it's safe to assume they're willing to move from their home to almost anywhere else for work. It's not due to cheap housing or even available housing. It's not due to the great commute into work. It's not due to the low cost of living. The only argument I hear is that tech companies move to SF/LA because lots of tech workers are there, and lots of tech workers are there because lots of tech companies are there.
So if there's nothing holding technology to SF/LA, when does it become a competitive advantage to have your offices anywhere but California? At some point it will. And it will be long overdue.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens...