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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
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.
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.
Guess what? In ancient Rome, they called Rome, "the city" and in England, they call London "the city", and it's similarly true elsewhere in history and the world. The condescension is imagined on your part.
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
SF bus tickets are, IIRC, $2 each. $4 a day for roughly 200 days a year ~= $800 a year. Even if you keep an $8000 used car for 10 years, you've still got to pay for gas, insurance, and repairs.
Unlimited passes for a month in SF are about $75, or $900 yearly.
It's not just a hipster thing. Everybody in the bay area calls it "the city". Conversely, only tourists will call it "frisco" or "San Fran".
Only fucked up and crazy people live San Francisco, If I were a start up and the only thing I needed was an internet connection, I would setup in Riverside --- Palm Springs or any where in the Coachella Valley--- where office space and housing is dirt cheap. Fuck paying to live in a "hip" city, it not hip is is just disgusting and expensive.
If you want to employ gun-toting rednecks then by all means set up in Hicksville. If you want the brightest and the best then you have to go where they want to live whether you like it or not.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
I live in the East Bay. I take BART to work everyday. From my stop in the East Bay to my stop in SF, it costs $4.15. Parking at the BART station costs $1. I live 2.4 miles from the BART station. Round trip, it costs me $9.30 to go to and from work.
Were I to be driving, my commute would be nearly 30 miles. I'd be driving across the Bay Bridge ($5 a day) and then parking in San Francisco would cost me a MINIMUM of $10 a day. This isn't even taking into account opportunity cost of time, wear and tear on the car or fuel.
The car is not cheaper in San Francisco. Ever.
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.
If you want to employ gun-toting rednecks then by all means set up in Hicksville. If you want the brightest and the best then you have to go where they want to live whether you like it or not.
Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I'm a well-educated, young (early 30s, anyway) computer scientist and I care a lot more about my net pay (after living expenses) than I do about living in a hip city. I find out a job is being offered in a high COL area, and I cross it off the list.
I think there are a lot of places that offer a much better balance: Austin, Atlanta, Denver, Salt Lake City, ... (I imagine responses will tell me these places are most definitely not hip.)
Problems with small towns.
1. relative poverty, and very few professional job opportunities..
2. Large portion of population lack perspective
3. Small towns have strong identities but have equally strong Inferiority complexes
1. Not true, I've had 2 high tech jobs out of small towns. I don't know what else to say about that.
2. Bald assertion about the people who live there. Completely unjustified from where I'm sitting too.
3. Again, painfully bald assertion of psychology of a LOT of people
problems with the suburbs
1. Poor planning regarding zoning distribution and transportation. -Everything just takes so freaking long to do compared to a small town.
2. Lack of identity
3. Feels very isolating for people who didn't grow up in one.
1. Not necessarily, but people are separated from everything. From their neighbors by fences, from different subdivisions by artificially twisty roads. From commerce by driving required distances. From industry by frequently hours by car.
2. Not just a lack of identity, but an facade of one, along with an enforced sterility.
3. I don't see what growing up in one has to do with anything. It is isolating, there's all sorts of elements that seem to exist only to isolate.
Problems with cities
1. Crime
2. Its Loud
3. bad schools
4. Neighborhoods with extreme poverty and toxic culture.
5. Hipsters inhabit the nice affordable neighborhoods
6. Have to deal with people shouting out angry profanity on an almost daily basis.
7. The city dynamic gets boring.
1. Not really anymore, crime rates have fallen dramatically since the 1980s, with numerous social mechanisms behind those drops, only some of which are politically reversible.
2. Not all parts of cities are loud, that's an impression people get from fiction more than reality. Suburbs tend to be near high velocity roads with constant traffic that is actually worse in some ways. Rural areas are quiet.
3. A self-fulfilling prophecy as wealthy people with kids move to places with "good schools". Of note, some cities have exceptional schools. Not the one I live in, but that's another story.
4. I can't interpret this as anything other than "Oh no minorities". Clarify this point.
5. As opposed to who? What paragon artificial slice of humanity do you interact with daily that is so non-annoying.
6. Never had to even once. Not even ONCE. Again seems like a stereotype out of fiction rather than something you've actually experienced.
7. I never asserted it to be exciting or constantly novel. It's a bit healthier for the human psyche, the environment, and in the long run, the economy. I'm not sure what amazing, non-boring things you think happen in the suburbs.
I'm really happy that it's so cheap for you, but you live in suburbia. Nothing happens there. You can't walk across the street to the corner store for a gallon of milk and stop to chat to your neighbours about the concert that's going to be in the nearby park next weekend. You can't walk up to the tennis courts to play a few sets with your roommate and stop for coffee and a snack on the way back while you sit outside on the street and strike up a conversation with the interesting dog owner at the next table. You can't walk to the independent bookstore, on the way bump into some old friends that you haven't seen in years, and instead of going to the bookstore you go to the bar and spend a few hours catching up over cocktails while a pretty lady at the next stool catches your eye and ends up becoming your future wife.
You suburban TV watchers and couch potatoes can throw as many smart alec remarks as you like about "insufferable hipsters". If you want to live in your cookie-cutter apartment complexes and dorm "communities" where nobody knows your name then knock yourself out. I prefer a real social life where "social networking" actually means getting out there and mingling with people, not sitting in front of a Facebook in the evening with reality TV in the background.
Drill baby drill - on Mars