Ugh I'm tired of these articles that declare SF / SV are over. This is my last rant...hopefully!
They take a small group of people that actually are moving and blow it up into a trend. It's been going on for years.
Yes home prices are insane. No salary doesn't make up for it. Yes your house will be smooshed in between others unless you got a lot of money. Yes you could get 2x the house for 1/2 the price anywhere else.
But it ignores two huge factors keeping people here. One the network density for tech. There are more jobs and support here than other places. More investment dollars create more startups which hopefully have more exits which attracts more investment dollars. It's a virtuous cycle.
Two is the lifestyle. Yes there's a liberal bent but it's traditionally been one of the most open minded places in the country. There are few other places you can experience so much of life's variety within a 3 hr drive.
And the whole remote working thing sounds logical but I see few companies actually widely adopting it. A lot of people prefer to connect in person, even though there is no rational reason why anymore.
It's not just the people who are moving away from the bay area, you also have to account for people who are dissuaded from moving to the area due to the high cost of living.
When looking at where to locate my startup we considered SF but when I ran the numbers our runway would be severely limited. Instead we could run for years off of personal savings in the southeast. Instead of being forced to raise VC money I could control my own destiny.
There are definitely strong network effects of living in the valley. They are not strong enough to beat out market forces if you have the skills to make the product yourself. A single person has a lot more leverage than they did 10 years ago. Most tech companies don't require hordes of engineers. There are smart and talented people everywhere.
The majority of tech happens outside of the valley, and its status as the center of innovation is more likely to be a quirk of history than an act of predestination. Build great products that people love to use and everything else will follow.
> been one of the most open minded places in the country
Not at all. I've lived in several states and I think you're conflating the "liberalness" with open mindedness. If anything, the Bay Area is one of the most closed-minded places in the country. There's absolutely no room for conservative ideas
I'd question that, with a caveat: if you want to live your life by conservative principles, nobody's going to care in the Bay Area. If you want other people to live their lives by your conservative principles, that's when people start to get pissed at you.
I know plenty of Christians in the Bay Area - my wife grew up in a conservative, evangelical household (and her parents are still very devout), so basically everyone she hung out with up through college runs in those circles. We don't personally drink or smoke out, though we have no problem with people who do. I have friends that go shooting regularly. I've been to a gun range with them, and enjoyed myself. My politics run mostly moderate libertarian - I'm for lower taxes and smaller government, but also believe that government has a role in righting externalities and ensuring a level playing field for everyone.
I've never met anyone in the Bay who has a problem with how I live my life - but then, I don't believe that other people need to live their lives the way I live mine.
Peter Thiel or the Oculus guy might disagree, but you might not hear them over the thousands of people demanding they be fired/divested from/run out of town.
FWIW, I agree with you. I've lived in several states (and a half-dozen countries) and I find the culture of the bay area more monolithically stifling than anywhere else I've lived. No hyperbole. And I am someone who would be considered well left-of-center just about anywhere else in the country.
Actually, I think the remote work aversion is completely rational. As background I worked in the Bay Area for about 7 years and worked remotely from LA for about a 1.5 years & moving now I'm moving back to the Bay. Remote work (specifically at home) offers a bunch of benefits like having a lot more flexibility, a lot more free time (not just in commute & traffic but also in being able to wake up 5 minutes before needing to be at work).
The downsides are:
* It's hard to motivate to actually work during "down" times whereas if I were at work physically I'd be much more inclined to do something once my regular tasks are complete.
* You lose a lot of the in-person communication that occurs either because you overhear coworkers or you run into people in the hall & just chat semi-socially.
* You are largely a forgotten quantity. Out-of-sight out-of-mind is real.
* Whiteboards are really hard even with moveable cameras & don't work for collaboration. Maybe there's software to help with this but it's not natural.
* Meeting infrastructure has to be extremely reliable & coworkers need to plan to account for every meeting being remote. A broken telecom unit, internet issues etc make unplanned changes harder to adapt to. Even harder is if, for example, an external partner is visiting & needs to present regularly & the local connection cannot be presented via the telecom system.
* There's far fewer opportunities for work which means it's hard to look for more lucrative opportunities. Similarly, the lack of opportunities means it's harder to leverage that for salary negotiations.
* The opportunities that do exist are at firms that aren't doing the bulk of interesting tech work. Even for multinationals the most interesting tech work (granted at least for my interests) tends to still be centralized in the Bay Area.
* If you're already working for a big tech company you're probably at the top of (or even above) your salary range for any alternative job unless you manage to get a promotion at the same time.
From an employers perspective, the efficiency costs aren't worth it.
For companies that didn't start with remote work, it's hard to justify supporting it when the office space is a sunk cost. Keep in mind that employers don't move employees around regularly for no reason. The bulk of the reason is to have as many people that need to communicate regularly as physically close to each other as possible.
I also notice that they do focus on the most extremes. I'm not going to claim that things are remotely cheap anywhere in the Bay Area, but if you're not dead set on being in The City (tm), the prices drop substantially. Again: yes, still expensive. Yes, if I lived somewhere else, my rent share for a 2BR place in Santa Clara would be less than I'm paying. But so would my salary, and in my experience -- and a little contrary to my expectations -- the salary often does make up for it on an absolute dollar basis.
There are few other places you can experience so much of life's variety within a 3 hr drive.
This, more than anything else, is what makes me reticent to move.
> been one of the most open minded places in the country
What if you want to ride a Google Bus to work, and have the audacity to think that you don't deserve to be shot at or have bricks thrown through your window? [1] [2]
Got down to the bend part where they just cited cnbc which only really took the word of that one dude that travels for work and somehow that turned it into a "commute". No one is driving 10 hours for work.
They take a small group of people that actually are moving and blow it up into a trend. It's been going on for years.
Yes home prices are insane. No salary doesn't make up for it. Yes your house will be smooshed in between others unless you got a lot of money. Yes you could get 2x the house for 1/2 the price anywhere else.
But it ignores two huge factors keeping people here. One the network density for tech. There are more jobs and support here than other places. More investment dollars create more startups which hopefully have more exits which attracts more investment dollars. It's a virtuous cycle.
Two is the lifestyle. Yes there's a liberal bent but it's traditionally been one of the most open minded places in the country. There are few other places you can experience so much of life's variety within a 3 hr drive.
And the whole remote working thing sounds logical but I see few companies actually widely adopting it. A lot of people prefer to connect in person, even though there is no rational reason why anymore.