San Francisco Poaching Tech Talent From Silicon Valley 282
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."
And also want to pay more rent (Score:5, Informative)
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 [huffingtonpost.com]
So that talent that young is going to have to commute the other way when they get married and have kids.
Re:And the cost (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:won't necessarily solve the 45-min commute (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think SF is even really designed around pedestrian activity. If it were, it might have good transit! It's been sort of non-designed, really, with quite a bit of de-facto design for cars, despite their green image opposing them in theory.
It was a medium-sized city with an extensive streetcar network, and that worked ok. But then the population increased, the number of cars greatly increased (which also slowed down the streetcars), and nothing much was done to fix it. The only two real improvements were around 1980: BART made it so that you could get between the Mission and financial district easily, and the Market Street Subway cleared out a little street-level congestion in the worst area.
I disagree. The Sunset and Richmond are kinda suburban all right, but the rest of the city is quite compact and the bus service is pretty comprehensive. Shame about the surly drivers though. Something needs to be done about them.
I used to live in Nob Hill and I was able to walk downtown, to North Beach, to Pacific Heights, and to the great little strip of bars and eating houses along Polk. I never used my car all weekend. It was my commute to the valley that forced me to move back down here.
Re:And the cost (Score:5, Informative)
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.