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San Francisco Poaching Tech Talent From Silicon Valley
jfruh writes "Silicon Valley, including San Jose and the chain of suburbs running north from it along the San Francisco Peninsula, has long been the epicenter of the tech business and startup scene. San Francisco itself, just a few miles to the north, has always been in the Valley's orbit — but now, more and more, the center of gravity is shifting to San Francisco, and the move seems to be hitting a tipping point. The reason: the young talent companies want to attract would rather live in a hip city than in suburban sprawl, and don't want to commute 45 minutes to work."
It takes about 45 minutes to commute between places actually in San Francisco, if you don't pick the right ones, thanks to SF Muni having barely had any improvement since the Market Street Subway was built in 1980. Could easily spend 45 minutes on the N-Judah...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not to mention younger people are less likely to stop and think of the financial ramifications of living in the city. Who needs money when you can just walk to work?
I looked into moving out there and made that decision long ago.
Issues of sprawl and crappy commutes notwithstanding, the people developing cool apps for smartphones want to live in SF because they are hipsters. These are not the same kinds of folks that "made" silicon valley. They were far nerdier, more interested in hardware, chip design, etc -- basically infrastructure stuff and they were NOT hip. They weren't quite as drawn to SF.
SF also has girls.
I still think the Peninsula and South Bay are far superior if you like outdoor activities: running, hiking, climbing, biking.
Psh. I like the old farts better than the new kids.
My friend who lives there calls it "the city". The hipness is implied by the condescending tone of voice when you say "the city".
San Francisco is undoubtedly cooler than the south bay, but it's also way more expensive. Not everyone can afford rent or the space they want in SF when compared to many of those south bay cities. That goes both for companies and people. Some companies will move or start there, but I think it's reaching to say we're at a tipping point.
And most importantly, people aren't raising kids in SF:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/13/san-francisco-moms-reflect_n_1508072.html
So that talent that young is going to have to commute the other way when they get married and have kids.
I live in Bellevue WA, which isn't as bad as most of silicon valley, but is still decidedly and obviously a suburb. I wish I could walk everywhere. I wish I could get by with zero cars instead of one. Unfortunately I also want to build big things, which mostly doesn't happen in San Fran, home of the startups. No offense, but 99.8% of startups do small, weenie things. Instead of trying to find the next Apple, Google, Microsoft I'd rather just work for the ones that already exist. There's Facebook, but my almost middle aged, child-ridden carcass is scared stiff of anywhere that boasts of its 24 hour hackathons. So the 'burbs it is, for me.
Suburbs seem to be the defining problem from my generation's perspective. It's a cultural wasteland. It lacks identity. And for a generation that has become almost entirely bound to the indoors, most of the proclaimed advantages are unnoticed. The mortgages that go with suburban living look like an anchor to a group that is already mostly overburdened with student loan debt. It looks like despair incarnate.
It'll be a SLOW shift towards urbanization though. Huge chunks of the populace look at the suburbs as what you are supposed to do, particularly once you have children. Falling crime rates and rising transit costs will eventually break that, though.
The problem I have with the term is that it suggests that there's something morally wrong with offering somebody more salary / benefits / perks to change jobs, or with that somebody choosing to make the move to greener pastures.
Employment is a 2-way street: My boss can choose to fire me at any time, I can choose to quit and do something else at any time. I understand that many employers would not like employees to be able to do that, but they can, and that's because they're your employees rather than your slaves.
I am officially gone from
Give a few years. Oh Noes 'gentrification'! The inevitable whinge. Tech money moves in, car dealerships and salons follow. Loft prices soar. Street vendors and used book stores move out. Rents go up and 'families' can't afford to live there any more.
Bitch, bitch, bitch. Thousands of hours of NPR hand wringing interviews with disgruntled pseudo-hippies.
I'll stay in Silicon Valley, I'd rather not have San Francisco dip their hands into 10-15% of my paycheck.
They said the exact same thing when I lived in the Valley during the dot-com boom. Not everyone wants to pay $2,000 for an apartment that has the privilege of homeless people pissing on the doorstep, walking on streets that reek of sewage, daily encounters with street trash that threaten anyone who is dressed normally, or the dilemma of owning a car with no place to park vs. a car-free lifestyle that makes shopping so difficult. Yes, I love the car alarms that go off constantly, the buses roaring by all the time, the ugly eucalyptus trees that give off a powerful smell, the harsh cold wind from the bay combined with the harsh sunlight, the lack of air conditioned offices, the "vibrant nightlife" of stores that close down at 5PM, the tourists who treat you like a funny zoo animal, and the warm welcome one receives from other Americans for saying they live in San Francisco.
Good riddance.
I hope they sell it to Mexico, we won't miss it.
This happened during the first dot-com boom, too. Huge influx of twentysomethings. Then the dot-com boom collapsed, and the number of twentysomethings in SF dropped 40%. (A friend of mine who runs a hip hair salon and throws big parties said of this "and the ones who still have jobs are working their butts off.")
The first dot-com boom moved into existing real estate. This time, there's extensive new construction.
Silicon Valley may be in permanent decline. The last production wafer fab in the valley closed in 2008. With impressive systems on a chip like the Allwinner A10 from China selling for $7, the margins in semiconductors are far smaller than they used to be. That threatens Intel. HP is still a mess. Yahoo is collapsing. Microsoft just posted their first loss. Google and Apple continue to thrive, but Facebook seems to be on track to be the next Myspace.
the "Young Talent" companies only make up a small part of the tech industry out here. Silicon valley still has the largest and most successful of the tech industry at the moment in Software (Apple, Google) and even the older struggling giants (Yahoo), which represent a MAJOR force for employment, Apple's new campus in cupertino will hire and bring in more bodies to the valley then the next 100 SF startups (even assuming that by the time 100 startups have formed 50 of them haven't flopped).
Years ago when I moved to Silicon Valley the ratio and rate was the same. There were "artsy" or "fun" gaming startup jobs (a few) available in SF, and there were startup jobs available here in SV. But the real hiring was being done by the big players, and those guys will never move to SF. The hub will remain. There is no "tipping point". Article is an opinion puff piece by a hipster looking San Francisco dweller - https://twitter.com/cscott_idg who is obviously as biased about the subject as I am.
Moving on.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
"Sprawl" is something usually associated with urban centers, and SF is certainly no exception. Usually, suburbs are criticized (by city dwellers) for their rigid zoning and ordinances. Some see the clean, organized structure of suburbs as being artificial (more so the people).
Also, I'm not sure how working in SF, which has horrible traffic, is going to cut commute times. Unless you live within walking or biking distance of your workplace, you're not saving much time. In the valley you can live in any one of about 10 cities and work in any other of those 10 cities and the traffic is not that bad unless you take 101 in the direction of... SF.
OP do you even live in the area?
How odd. I would have thought that, of all places, Silicon Valley would have launched its "B" Ark full of all the PHBs who can't believe people can actually do their jobs while sitting at home in bunny-slippers.
Fellow geeks - Telecommuting! We need to stop putting up with this "physical presence" crap and start making the number of days per month we actually go into the office a core negotiating point in any interview. "You want me Tuesdays and Thursdays? Okay, I want an extra week of vacation to make up for the needlessly wasted hours of my life spent in traffic to humor your delusions that I can somehow program better in an uncomfortable, harshly-lit, noisy environment surrounded by people who want to tell me all about what vile substance their kids/cats spewed on innocent bystanders this past weekend."
/ And let's not even talk about how I have a triplet of 28" monitors on my home workstation while getting a mere second 22-incher at work took nearly an act-of-god
We've crossed this bridge many times before throughout the years from various articles.
What happened to companies (especially high tech companies) allowing people to work from home? Maybe a visit to the office once every two weeks or maybe a monthly meeting for employee social time...sharing projects, dinner, etc etc. This means that you could employ people not even local to SF which is in the end overall cheaper(for everyone). There are many many bright people who live elsewhere in the US(many of them not single) that just dont want to live in this area for many different social, economical and political reasons.
This also means you dont have to pay through the nose for a building that houses all the employees. Just room enough for the owner, the receptionist and a big open atrium/hall for company meetings when everyone is supposed to check in. I really don't think companies get it. Check out Art & Logic . All their employees work remote and they at least claim that they only look for the best and the brightest. Their clients are also big time companies.
That is just ignorant! Even though I don't believe the article - Uhm - how do you think the San Andreas fault GETS to San Francisco? It runs through the hills that create Silicon Valley. Always has - always will. Ever heard of the Loma Preitta Quake? That large percentage of the US brain truss you are worrying about ALREADY lives in Earth Quake country.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Riverside CA is viable. It has a University of California campus and good computer science, engineering and bio programs (probably others as well). It's location is convenient for recreation. The mountains are about 1-1.5 hours away, so is the beach, so is the desert. There are nice communities with housing at a small fraction of the cost of LA and Orange County (OC). A lot of very talented and skilled people working in LA and OC actually live in Riverside or one of its neighboring towns. If you were to open shop in one of the industrial/research parks next to the UC campus you will have access to students and many industry veterans currently working in LA/OC but living in/near Riverside who would love to ditch the long commute.
They'd rather live in a 150 sq. ft. apartment for $1,000/month and ride the metro to work.
I live in Milpitas which is too urban and too congested in the first place for my taste. I work in Santa Clara. SF is totally out of the question,
I've told my recruiters I'm specifically not interested in anything that's in SF. Perhaps South San Francisco tops but not the city itself. I am not going to move to
San Francisco and live there. I feel ill when I'm in that place, sorry.
Here's an example of what goes on in SF: For easter I went to Whole Foods to buy easter bunnies for my family and friends.. came to $100.
Well turns out I spent around $300 for a bag full of chocolates. $100 went to WF, $200 went to the City of San Francisco:
$140 for parking at the expired meter
$60 for being more than 18" from the curb
and "Hazard tow was considered"
and it all went down in the 15 mins I parked my car to run in and get that stuff. Before you argue "Oh you should have paid the traffic meter and ... I'm going to laugh right in your face, like I'm going to spend every morning smelling other
watch how you park" a.) I'll argue back there's no real need for me to live/work anywhere where I have to pay a meter just to hit a grocery store b.)
I was parked close enough to the curb and wasn't blocking anything. I was in the city because a friend of mine from overseas wanted to go see it.
Oh and if you argue I could use BART and busses
people's farts in a crowded train/bus. NFW.
Then there are the bums. You can't go anywhere without some bum hitting you up for a dollar. They will run after you and they are obnoxious.
That's from having visited SF a few times. I've lived here in the bay area for 8 years and have only been in SF maybe 5 times.
Whoever paid and placed this article, go and shove it, not interested. If your company is moving into the city to pay more $$$$$ for sqft
fine go for it, but I will not be working for you there.
Maybe living there is better than visiting, but every time I made the yearly drive to SF for the Software Development Expo, it was hell. Streets that seem nigh-vertical, an insane profusion of one-way streets -- in one case, two of them meeting in opposite directions at the top of a hill -- plus paying through the nose for parking. I was always glad to be back on I-80 and headed home.
Not intended as a flame, I know there are people who love SF, but I like living in a post-WW2 horizontal city instead of a pre-WW2 vertical one.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
And my rent is $2035 for a 900 square foot 2 bedroom that I've had for the last 6 years. Rent control is great :)
Sure, it's noisy some nights. Sure some nights you can't see your hands in front of your face because of the fog. Sure, there are homeless people -- so what? If you're old and have a family then perhaps this isn't the place for you. SF is pretty anti-child. If you don't like being in the thick of everything -- stay in a quiet suburb. For single 20 and 30 somethings, this is where it's at.
I've been told by a friend that one of the issues with running businesses within SFO is that once you grow beyond a certain size your costs really start to escalate because of various city ordinances and taxes. Don't they have some health care requirements that other nearby cities/towns don't? Not to mention the cost of real estate, etc.
Being a great place to live doesn't necessarily mean it's a great place to run a business. At some point, unless you're wildly successful or simply cannot exist outside the SFO ecosphere, the businesses will look to either lobby for lower costs or will move out of the area forcing the workers to either move or commute.
By "watch out for the drunks", you are referring to the bus drivers, right?
"Remember, don't drink and drive!
Ride the Bus, and leave the drinking to us!"
Huh? What are you talking about? Where the hell else are you supposed to meet people if not in a bar? Would you prefer me to meet some losery loner on an online dating site or something?
Meetup.com, for one. There are other activity groups as well. (Most aren't free, but Meetup is). Then there are social scenes around hiking, skating, cycling, even rowing.
Thing is, even if you participate in a group centered near the South Bay, a disproportionate number of the women are from SF. And, of course, the groups centered in or nearer the City have more women.
The rest of us engineers will stay in the South Bay.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well - the post said the 'key phrase' 'tipping point' so it is clearly 'part of the intellegencia' and '0 day news'.
Must be true
I had a job opportunity years ago in SF and after looking at the muliple systems I would have to traverse (assuming Auto would be even worse than transit) it turned out it would eat 4 hourse of any workday to do the commuting from the SouthBay.
That versus 40 miutes a day for something in the South Bay.
You can only get so much done using a netbook while on the transit (otherwise why not just work remote - except that hardly works for most jobs)
I build mobile devices and test CPUs before they hit silicon. Even if my primary tools are just software and an oscilloscope (and maybe JTAG and LA).
My friend designs large scalable services (think iTunes store), which I consider to be more of an engineering project than writing a trendy mobile app.
It seems that a lot of the web development is moving up the peninsula. There is nothing wrong with being a software developer instead of an engineer. But some of these kids get an inflated ego about what they do. It's important that we take them down a peg whenever possible.
Honestly, let them take the "talent". What they do and who they are "poaching" does not involve talent and are not talent.
Put it this way,
I left the city one Saturday to go fix laptops with a guy from work. I lived in SF -- He lived in Antioch/Pittsburgh (the suburbs at the end of the BART line)
After a few hours we wanted to get some food. I was hit with the stark reality that our choices were:
1) Applebee's , with a 45min wait
2) Roundtable Pizza.
This guy has nice house, nice engineering job, his wife did real estate, But no matter how much money he makes and how nice his house may be, it comes down to this simple Applebee's/Roundtable metaphor for me.
I dont want that to happen on a regular basis.
Maybe some people are fine with that?
it's nice to know that you could dine out every night in SF -- and by the time you tried every restaurant, maybe in a year or so.....new ones would have opened up.
Plus, you are likely to bump into friends, acquaintences in the process. Whereas suburbia, people tend to pull into their automatic garage door opener home and watch TV. You don't really have the same social/community structure.
end of message.