Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a New York Times report: In recent months, a growing number of tech leaders have been flirting with the idea of leaving Silicon Valley. Some cite the exorbitant cost of living in San Francisco and its suburbs, where even a million-dollar salary can feel middle class. Others complain about local criticism of the tech industry and a left-wing echo chamber that stifles opposing views. And yet others feel that better innovation is happening elsewhere. "I'm a little over San Francisco," said Patrick McKenna, the founder of High Ridge Venture Partners who was also on the bus tour. "It's so expensive, it's so congested, and frankly, you also see opportunities in other places." Mr. McKenna, who owns a house in Miami in addition to his home in San Francisco, told me that his travels outside the Bay Area had opened his eyes to a world beyond the tech bubble. "Every single person in San Francisco is talking about the same things, whether it's 'I hate Trump' or 'I'm going to do blockchain and Bitcoin,'" he said. "It's the worst part of the social network."

[...] Complaints about Silicon Valley insularity are as old as the Valley itself. Jim Clark, the co-founder of Netscape, famously decamped for Florida during the first dot-com era, complaining about high taxes and expensive real estate. Steve Case, the founder of AOL, has pledged to invest mostly in start-ups outside the Bay Area, saying that "we've probably hit peak Silicon Valley." But even among those who enjoy living in the Bay Area, and can afford to do so comfortably, there's a feeling that success has gone to the tech industry's head. "Some of the engineers in the Valley have the biggest egos known to humankind," Mr. Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman, said during a round-table discussion with officials in Youngstown.

Comments

Also Crime and Sh*t in the Streets.

[Zorro]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/03/05/epidemic-of-car-break-ins-makes-parking-a-nightmare-for-bay-area-drivers/

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) — Car break-ins are on the rise across the Bay Area. In fact, 2017 was a record-breaking year for our three largest cities.

We’re seeing record numbers of car burglaries in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. Chances it has happened to you or someone you know.

San Francisco leads the pack with 31,120 break-ins last year.

In the same period, San Jose reported 6,476 car burglaries. That number is the highest the city has ever seen and a 17 percent increase compared to 2016.

It was also a record year in Oakland with 10,007 reported cases in 2017, up 32% compared to the previous year.

Re:Also Crime and Sh*t in the Streets.

[Thelasko]

In a city where a six figure salary can barely get by, I'm not surprised there is a crime problem.

Re:Also Crime and Sh*t in the Streets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there's plenty of parts of the city that are clean, but the downtown area is disgusting.

I live near downtown and the streets and alleys around me are filthy and inhabited by vagrants.

Filthy people lay on the sidewalks passed out on drugs. People openly smoke crack and shoot up in the streets and the police just pass on by. When the sun comes out for a few days the stench of piss fills the nostrils. It's not uncommon to see shit on the sidewalk. SoMa and the Tenderloin are even worse.

Have you seen the filth around City Hall? Have you seen how Fisherman's Wharf and Market Street around Union Square are pressure washed multiple times per week? Probably not, because they do it late at night or early in the morning when nobody is around. I see it happen when I'm out running.

But really as disgusted as I am by what I see around me, I have to admit that it's nothing compared to what you'll see in the streets out in the industrial area around the Bayview area. It's an actual shantytown ghetto out there.

Re:Also Crime and Sh*t in the Streets.

[Solandri]

That's mostly due to Proposition 47. It was billed as a way to reduce overcrowding in jails, but did so by reducing the property theft crimes where less than $950 was stolen/damaged from a felony to a misdemeanor. In California, you can break into and steal from as many cars as you want now, and as long as you keep the property loss below $950 per incident, the only punishment you'll get (if you're caught) is a fine and maybe 1 year of jail time. In many cases the police can't be bothered to prosecute these cases anymore because it wastes more of their time and money than the thief's.

There was initially a downtick in property theft crimes in 2015-2016 (part of a 30-year downward trend), leading Prop 47 proponents to claim they were right that it wouldn't affect crime rates. But it's looking more like it just took petty thieves a couple years to get a feel for how the new law worked.

Wrong idea about "conservative"

[SuperKendall]

The word or idea itself (conservative) is not the ideal way to run a small tech start-up for example. Being conservative implies that you don't like taking risks

That is totally wrong. It means conserving energy for things that are important. So risk taking is fine, but you can be prepared for failure or alternative paths before you take risks, not just jump in blindly.

It can also mean taking BIGGER risks, just fewer of them. Basically you cannot ascribe risk taking with a political bent, as people of all persuasions are happy to take risks, they just have different approaches or conditions.