How Silicon Valley's Tech Reign Will End 395
theodp writes "Silicon Valley's stranglehold on West Coast innovation is in danger. The main problem? It's no fun to live in Silicon Valley. Technology is people, explains The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, and more people are choosing to live in cities. And Silicon Valley isn't like a city, it's like a suburb. 'What's happening now,' says author Bruce Katz, 'is workers want to be in Oakland and San Francisco.' So, how might Silicon Valley save itself? 'Silicon Valley is going to have to urbanize,' Katz said. '[There is a] migration out of Silicon Valley to places where people really want to live.'"
and expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is incredibly boring, AND it is ridiculously expensive. It's not just a problem with "Silicon Valley" - tech money is slowly destroying the entire Bay Area, by destroying the ability of non-tech millionaires to live normal lives. It's starting in Berkeley. :-(
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It looked like hell in 1991 when I visited from the UK. The highways must be just one big parking lot by now.
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if I need to be at work at 9am, its hell.
otoh, if I can be at work at 10.30, then its not nearly as bad as you say.
if you are allowed flex hours, its quite liveable. if you work for a company that still thinks like they did 50 years ago, well, you better live close to work..
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On the other hand, the whole are would feel much more closed in, much less spacious, and generally more urban. The reason people pay less for apartments in high rises (or even relatively small buildings) is because it's a lot less pleasant to live in them than it is to live in suburban sprawl.
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The reason people pay less for apartments in high rises
Not a valid generalization. In Manhattan the highrises are often the premium buildings. I've also lived in both garden apartments and a "highrise" (only five stories, but a real building instead of a two story pile of kindling). The real building was way better. The head of my bed was on the other side of the wall from a baby's crib, and I never heard that kid once.
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No, NIMBYs and ridiculous land-use laws are driving up prices. If we added as many new apts as the market demands using the amazing technological innovation that is the elevator, we wouldn't see the prices we do.
Hear, hear! I get tired of people complaining that they can't hire enough people in SV. The obvious reason is that it's too expensive to live there, and the obvious solution is higher density. There must be some zoning and regulation in SV that keeps that from happening, which annoys me even more. I'm not anti-suburb at all. I've lived in them by choice almost my whole life. But you can't have your nice little suburban enclave and then complain you can't get enough people. Make up your mind.
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And you're not just going to pop out at lunch to hit up that new trendy lunch kiosk or the funky clothing store.
Which is something about 1% of the engineers I have met have any interest in doing at lunch on a workday. Did you RTFA? *Tech Reign*...
Or after work catch a play in a small off-off-Broadway type show that you are intrigued by, that perhaps your coworker is in.
Saw my coworker in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum a few years ago at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, actually. I've also gone to a few local premieres of PDI/Dreamworks and Pixar movies via friends who worked on them. And though I live a bit outside of SF now I have been to a bunch of plays and concerts there, of course. Ever hear of the Fi
Really? (Score:2)
Now you're getting somewhere (Score:2, Insightful)
The cost of living is insane out there. There are great engineers all over the world.
What is going to kill Silicon Valley is their pathological need to have the "best and brightest", the "stars", and the "super geniuses" - all to make yet another social networking website or app or yet another push advertising app.
When I see a tech entrepreneur whine and complain how she can't get enough qualified people - like JavaScript engineers - and claims that there are only 25 people in the World who can what she needs to be done in JavaScript, they're headed for a downfall.
Silicon Valley lost its c
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You're right, the wannbees will kill it. And the management leechs that live off of them.
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I'm in the NYC area, and I see a lot of the same thing: a bunch of hoopla about the "Silicon Alley", a bunch of events for people to "network" at, and a lot of talk about VC funding for "great ideas", which are all just Yet Another Social Networking website or app or the like.
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Mostly agreed, except for the bit about Digi-Key and Element 14. I order all my stuff from Mouser, Avnet, Arrow, and onlinecomponents.com. Digi-Key has a great selection, but their prices are the highest in the industry. And Element 14 seems to have prices even higher than Mouser, so I'm not sure what the attraction there is. For finding parts, the most useful site I've found is findchips.com: it'll show you what the prices and stock levels are for any part from dozens of distributors at once.
However, o
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
The cost of living is insane out there. There are great engineers all over the world.
Including other parts of the US. While SV is an amazing collection of talent (not everyone there, but enough) it's also one of the most provincial places I've ever seen. The idea that good talent can be found elsewhere in the country, at better prices no less, never seems to occur to anyone.
Oakland????!!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work at a major silicon valley company, and haven't met a single person who wants to live in Oakland. No matter how "hip" it is, the violent crime rate is 4x that of San Jose (the largest suburban city in Silicon Valley).
Source : http://best-cities.findthebest.com/compare/196-246/Oakland-vs-San-Jose
Plenty of techies do live in SF and commute to Silicon Valley companies every day. But SF isn't a city you want to raise kids in - the only people I know with children in SF are either too poor to move, or so incredibly rich that they can send their kids to private schools.
Re:Oakland????!!?? (Score:5, Informative)
The parts of Oakland near the BART stations have undergone considerable gentrification over the past 10 years, and yeah, a lot of it is due to techies moving there. The area around West Oakland BART is nothing like it used to be, although some of that is also due to the area being less cut off since the demolition of the Cypress Street Viaduct. Uptown Oakland (near 19th st BART) is also pretty gentrified, again largely with tech workers.
Re:Oakland????!!?? (Score:5, Funny)
Simple.
Gentrified Thug 1: I say, dear fellow, is that a bandana in non-local colors you are wearing?
Gentrified Thug 2: Why, yes, yes it is. How astute of you to notice.
Gentrified Thug 1: How unfortunate! I must inform you that this is neighborhood is the pervue of the Crips Club, and that by our most recent bylaws, we are not permitted to allow members of other clubs to conduct business while lacking the proper authorization.
Gentrified Thug 2: Well, sir, as a member of the Bloods Club, I must inform you that our Charter does not recognize the authority of any other club to dictate where our morning perambulations will take us.
Gentrified Thug 1: In that case, sir, I am regretfully forced to use this projectile launching device to forcibly insert metal slugs into your body.
Gentrified Thug 2: And I shall endeavour to use my own one-handed projectile launching device to perforate your fundament, after which I shall perform non-consensual copulation with your mother.
*bang* *bang*
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I guess it's an age thing. Kids would prefer to live on a farm. Adolescents and young people like the big cities. When they grow older and have children they move out to the suburbs.
Re: I can't wait! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do they want to live in cities? (Score:2)
I have to think there is something more going on then lack of entertainment. Furthermore, married couples tend to prefer suburban settings.
Consider that the solution here is getting your engineers dates. If they marry then demographically they'll be inclined to stay and even avoid the city.
Same precdiction every year (Score:3)
3rd Gen Valley Native here (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost of living.
I'm telling you right now, after living outside the Bay Area for a few years.
There is NOTHING Silicon Valley has to offer except nostalgia of its past.
Today, we have zero land to develop on.
The city I am from, Mountain View, is in constant process to build these god awful HOA town homes, stacked one on top of the other. you might think its a wonderful place to be, and surely the weather has everything going for it.
But that's it.
The glory days are gone.
What is coming next is the city sprawl, you can count on it.
My family came out here to grow orchards back in the early 1920's, mostly Apricots and Almonds.
These are non existent today.
You can find the same quality of living with just as much cultural activity in many other places across the US.
And most importantly, the cost of living is far cheaper virtually everywhere else.
Seriously.
This place has become more of a status symbol for those who live and work out here than anything else.
There is also a growing divide amongst the wealthy and the living paycheck to paycheck classes in the Bay Area as well.
People are really wasting their money and time out here and they don't even know it.
They're missing the point imho entirely.
I'll be leaving again soon, this time I intend for good.
I'll miss Santa Cruz and The coast line and hills more than anything else.
But I know, there are plenty of those places left unspoiled all across the coast.
just my 2 cents.
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Eh, what coast would that be? Here [outsideonline.com] is what Mt Everest looks like near the peak these days.
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I'm a third gen native as well, now living elsewhere.
First, regarding the article, it's obvious that it's objectively wrong about the idea that people don't want to live in the valley because house prices in the valley are absurdly high and climbing. The market has spoken and it has conclusively proven TFA to be incorrect.
Second, regarding your comment...yeah, I largely agree. I miss a lot of things about the bay area, but whenever I go back it's sad to see what the place has become. I think new resident
Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? Where have you lived where your neighbors shunned you for not belonging to the "local church"? I've lived in several places around the country and have never seen that at all (TN, VA, AZ, MS), even though the places I've lived have not exactly been "forward thinking". In any town or city with a population greater than 300, there's multiple churches and people don't all go to the same church. In any normal city, tons of people don't go to church at all, and people just don't ask about it.
Finally, where have you ever lived where you needed to be "accepted by your neighbors"? In all the different places I've lived (probably about 20 different addresses), it was very rare I knew my neighbors well or said much to them besides an occasional "hi". Americans are famous for not interacting with their neighbors.
Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here (Score:4, Insightful)
Grishnakh -- HEAR HEAR HEAR!!
Exactly the same reaction. WTF? Has this guy ever actually lived anywhere else, or is he just spewing out what he knows surely MUST be true?
I've been all around the United States. It is possible that places like the ones he describe exist? Sure, I guess. Is it the norm, or even common?
No. No it's not.
lllll aj
Re:3rd Gen Valley Native here (Score:5, Informative)
"Where have you lived where your neighbors shunned you for not belonging to the "local church"?"
Idaho Falls, Idaho. They don't much hold with all that whacky stuff the liberals down in Pocatello do. Boy, do I wish I were kidding.
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Maybe, but's he's been modded way up, so apparently the Slashdot crowd really does think that in 80% of the US, you'll be shunned by everyone in a town or city of tens of thousands of residents if you don't attend the one church there, which apparently has seating capacity for 10,000+ people at a time.
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What he calls "forward thinking" is actually code for "big city liberalism", which isnt like regular liberalism. We are talking about the people that want to outlaw large sodas, outlaw salt in food, outlaw guns, outlaw lack of health insurance, and so on.. notice the common theme of "outlaw"
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"quite a lot of the US insists you belong to the local church and if you don't, you are never accepted by your neighbors."
I think you have a personal narrative about reality that you enjoy, which has as a possible downside having no correspondence with actual reality.
A fairly narrow view point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A fairly narrow view point (Score:5, Interesting)
All people who enjoy living in cities are hipsters? I guess like, 75% of Europeans are hipsters, because they prefer living in a nice part of London to some godforsaken suburb...
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What? 370 odd million people prefer living in London? Save us from little englanders....
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That's because everything is different in Europe. By most accounts, cities there are actually nice, and it's the suburbs that aren't so great. The reverse is true here in America.
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The only people who can afford to live in a nice part of London are diplomats, bankers, ex-dictators, and oil billionaires.
US urbanization is around 82%, higher than the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.
Try Austin (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've heard good things about austin.
problem is, its still inside texas.
I would not be caught dead in texas. sorry. but texas is too ful of Teh Crazy. and once you wander out of austin, you are now in crazy land.
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We on the East Coast know that every place west of the Mississippi is nuts. Of course that's also true of places east of the Mississippi, but that's another story.
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No really, once you leave Austin, you really are in crazy land. Austin is like someone took a piece of California (from Northern California, given the weather) and plunked it down in the middle of Texas, pointed at it, and say "nyah nyah! that's your capitol now!" Because everywhere else is so hostile to people who are different, most of those people have converged on Austin for protection. Even other college towns (like College Station) are good places to get beaten up for wearing funny clothes, or what ha
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Don't worry. It evens out. They may not want you there either. ;)
I've lived in a fair number of places including Texas. In all of them, most of the people are fine. They may be different than you in some ways, but that's what diversity is all about.
And, everywhere I've lived has had at least a sprinkling of assholes. It's not a function of the place so much as a function of there being humans in it.
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I agree. California is much better:
1. No noncompete contracts written on flypaper.
2. Temperature and and humidity are lower in the summer.
3. Sane limitations on invention agreements
4. More people beleve in evolution instead of creationism.
5. California has initiative and referendum. Texas doesn't.
6. Even though Texas has no personal income tax, property taxes are twice as high as California's.
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This kind of post proves that provincial people exist everywhere.
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Austin is a part of CA. As is Santa Fe, Boulder, Jackson, Laramie, Aspen, Bozeman, Sun Valley, and Steamboat. All Californicated or soon to be.
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Austin has it's good points, it's gained it's share of problems in recent years. Full disclosure - I've lived in Austin for over 5 years, many of my friends have been here for 10+. I'm looking to make a move back to one of the coasts in the next year or so.
1.) There is the climate. As I type this, it's 106F (40C) right now. It could be worse. It hit ~114F last summer. There's an awful lot of blacktop and concrete out there that's just baking in it. Walking around outside and breathing feels a bit l
Some people like SF (Score:3, Informative)
Some people like San Francisco.
Others find it to be a crowded dirty place that smells like urine.
Nobody wants to live in Oakland.
Why people don't want to live in Silicon valley? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too f-ing expensive.
Almost requires an IPO or your startup to be bought to buy a home in a decent location around here. I guess that's the benefit of telecommuting. You can live way down in Gilroy and VPN into your company located in Palo Alto without having to drive for 2 hours.
"Starter homes" around here which I'd say is a 1500sq ft with almost no land 10ft from your side walls to your neighbors' and your house is 20ft from the back property line), costs $500k and up. Want to live in a district with good schools? Take that same 40 year old house and crank up the price to a cool million. Oh and you'll need to put in about $50-75k worth of upgrades to replace that cracking wood shingle roof, worn out carpets and pipes that have been moving hard water for 40 years. That's ok for the seller because they know someone will move in to put their kids into the top schools around here. Oh don't forget the $15k worth of property taxes each year and potentially $400/month in HOA fees.
Housing prices are now higher than during the bubble, dot-com or housing bubble. It didn't help that all the sellers sat on their homes in the hopes that some Facebook millionaire would want to buy their house.
I live in the silicon valley and can't wait for the day to sell my home and move to another part of the country and pay for a 3k sq ft home for $500k with an acre of land on a lake.
Silicon Valley, like NYC but spread out and requires a car.
SF not that great (Score:5, Insightful)
San Francisco is not as "fun" as it used to be. Higher rents drove the artists out a decade ago. SF has about 8,000 homeless people, out of a population of only 750,000. Most of the bookstores have closed. The nightclub scene is slowly being crushed by gentrification.
The financial district is struggling to stay relevant. The big SF banks either tanked or merged with banks elsewhere.
It already ended (Score:2)
Ever been to Shenzhen?
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As long as you don't mind getting lung cancer, lead poising, or oppressed by a brutal Communist regime; China is a GREAT place.
California people... (Score:2, Insightful)
We don't.
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You can't beat coastal CA weather. NoCal is pretty good. SoCal is even better, 55-95 F temp range. 10 months a year it's 65-85 F. You live outside all year. Beaches are 5-25 min away. Mountains are 25-60 min away. I lived in a house with NO air conditioning. Just a ceiling fan and getting out to a movie or the pool in the afternoon during August. Coastal breezes cool it off after 5pm (rather than the heat rising until the sun goes down).
It's a different way to live and if you've never experienced it befor
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Its really because we can't live anywhere else. I tried, failed. If you're from here, the rest of the country has seasons/bugs/religion/closedmindedness. If you grew up without those things, its really hard to live somewhere they are endemic. Look, if you grew up in the frozen wasteland, the weather _anywhere_ is great. If you're used to thunderstorms, you can handle hurricanes. Humidity is the same everywhere, and if you grew up with it, its no big deal. "Worshiped on Sunday, forgotten all week?" You know
Not for me: (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll take my small rural town in the Midwest.
Cities are great for those who like them, but they seem an endless expanse of concrete canyons and people to me. (Yes, I've lived there.)
Like many others, I suspect that it's the younger types that are more up for central city life. When they have a family, more opt for the burbs or even farther out in the rural to quasi rural areas. This isn't very surprising as their needs have changed.
One item that's lacking here is good mass transit. For those who can afford cars, that's a cost or an inconvenience, but for the young or not so well off that can't, it sorta traps them here in a little burg of 1300.
Strangely enough, mass transit used to be here in the early 1900s. There was an interurban electric train system that linked the small towns to the larger ones. (About 20 miles to each of the two in the area.)
Wants to live in silly valley? (Score:3)
Try, "can afford to live in silly valley". Six figures is minimum wage there. I interviewed for a job in Pittsburgh. The more I looked at it the more I liked it. I would've made more money and paid about $100k less for a good house in a decent neighborhood. In a city home to CMU, University of Pittsburgh, Biotech companies, and regional energy companies. And brew pubs.
If you want a good standard of living, go east.
oh really? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure this writer has been to silicon valley in the last 10 years. There are "walkable, urban" spaces all over the place. The problem is that they're crazy expensive.
The valley is not full of the sleepy suburban areas from 30 years ago. There's a significant amount of high density housing, hip restaurants and bars. A lot of it looks like what you'd expect to see around a large college campus - cheaply built apartments with "interesting" architecture, gelato, coffee, smoke shops and international cuisine. The single family homes actually in the valley are not an option for anyone you might consider a "worker."
The only still-suburban spaces are squeezed between the urbanizing centers in the valley and the two cities: San Francisco and San Jose. Talking about Oakland as an important city to Silicon Valley is... weird.
I know there are several companies in Oakland, but it seems more like a separate, nearby community than part of Silicon Valley. San Jose is larger in population than both San Francisco and Oakland, but is far more spread out. San Francisco still dominates the local political landscape, but San Jose long ago took over the role of counterbalancing city to SF in regional policy and diversity - Oakland is just another set of SF neighborhoods now.
Not well put, but you make some good points ... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 1950s, San Jose and its suburbs adopted an urban growth strategy that was essentially no planning strategy at all. They minimized zoning and urban planning, assuming that giving developers the freedom to develop land without much oversight would somehow produce a quality urban environment as a side-effect.
So San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Campbell, Mountain View and Cupertino spread out because developers opted to build where land was cheap. However, city streets were not extended in a sensible way. To run personal errands on Saturday, we had to start driving five miles (and through a dozen stoplights) just to find a grocery store. Three or four other errands could require fifteen to twenty miles. Add traffic and stoplights, and it could take you five hours or more, to run just three local errands.
In addition, cities here allowed commercial property to mix a little too closely with residential property. This raised crime rates, lowered property values, and made everything ugly. No one planned for parks or shopping centers or other public amenities. When shopping centers were finally built, traffic patterns were ghastly. When planners were forced to route freeways through the area; they were routed where the land was cheap; not where they were really needed -- first they cut neighborhoods in half, and then in quarters. Parks were placed, twenty years late, where more land was cheap, or where well-to-do neighborhoods were still located.
All this turned the valley into a happy little piece of Houston, Texas, only with worse freeways.
The good things about Silicon Valley arose from areas that were planned: Stanford. Large Aerospace companies along Bayshore freeway. Aerospace died, but by then, silicon had taken the place of airplanes. Then silicon died. Today, we run on software and business momentum from the old days, but the momentum is formidable.
As bad as all this is, it won't ultimately kill the valley. I think lack of professional creativity and opportunity will finally kill us. Large companies here never did value what the Harvard Business School calls 'disruptive technology.' They do not hire creative problem solvers. Business startup costs used to be low: Today, they are through the roof, and getting higher. Venture Capital has ruled the roost since 1997 or so, they are getting stronger, and they do not value original ideas.
Major companies here are all slowly dying (like they always have -- remember Fairchild Instruments, DEC and Atari?) -- the difference is; that it is much, much harder to start a new company here than it used to be -- and new companies are where the big companies come from when the old companies finally die.
tt77
Decentralization and diversification (Score:2)
The tension created by "City vs. Suburbs" is strictly for the benefit of the story. Existing companies are opening new offices in urban areas but for the most part they aren't closing offices in the suburbs. Sure, new companies are often starting in cities but they will likely open suburban offices if they survive long enough. It's a healthy kind of diversification that will likely reach some sort of equilibrium over the next decade or two. Does that mean the stature of suburbs will decrease a bit while tha
Ever lived there? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have. It sucks. It's not actually a city, it's more like a long series of 80s era malls which have been reworked to house Trader Joes and suchlike.
The grocery stores are like, C- grade, the place is sprawled out all over and the downtown, which is largely irrelevant to what's know as Silicon Valley- Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, is unremarkable , dull and smallish. The housing it of course through the roof in price while being only mediocre , find-it-anywhere 80s and 90s style apartments.
The houses are just ordinary ranch houses albeit with 750k price tags. really, the whole place was better, just *better* before Fairchild Semi-conductor started it on the path that is now Silicon Valley.
I was only too happy to get out of there. Nearly any place whose name you know, SF, Portland, Austin, etc has more to offer someone looking for something to do on a weekend never mind NY NY or Boston or San Diego or even Kansas City has more to offer young, single people ...
Maybe it has great grade schools...
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It's not actually a city, it's more like a long series of 80s era malls which have been reworked to house Trader Joes and suchlike.
Anybody who complains that Si Valley is too suburban has not lived in Northern Virginia. The Peninsula and the corridor down to San Jose has lots of little cities with smallish but eclectic centers strung like pearls along El Camino, 101 and Caltrain. Compared to the Beltway's endless fields full of asphalt and cookie-cutter tracts, it's a walkable urban paradise.
Yup the new urban tech center is... Detroit (Score:2)
A real city with real people that's doing cutting edge tech [inc.com] not just a bunch of expensive suburbs like the valley, Fantastic cheap place to be.
San Francisco is Grand! (Score:2)
Because more people are choosing to live in cities (Score:2)
I left after 21 years (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent 21 years in the Valley, doing 4 startups and then 8 years in venture capital. It was great, and I couldn't have had the same opportunities anywhere else.
But I got sick of it, and moved right at the end of 2011 (hint: don't have a moving truck drive across the US between Xmas and the end of the year...it freezes itself and all of your stuff) to North Carolina, in the Research Triangle Park area. The Bay Area's crowding, expense and divided society issues began to bug me more and more.
So now I can compare the world's leading tech area with another tech area, way lower on the totem pole.
The cost of living is much lower and the quality of life is much higher in NC for most people. Housing, at almost every level, is one sixth the price of the Bay Area. Average household incomes are about the same (yes, really, about the same....most people in the Valley aren't rich), but a regular family making $50k per year can afford a 2,000 sq ft house on a quarter of an acre in NC. Everything costs less in NC, e.g. my garbage is $16/month instead of $50, water is $21 instead of $100, sales taxes are about 3 points lower, so everything benefits from that, and gas/utilities/groceries are all noticeably lower. Healthcare is great in both places if you have good insurance. Public schools are, overall, better in NC. There are very good local colleges, and there are more PhDs per capita than anywhere else in the US. You don't have Stanford and Berkeley, of course, but you have Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State; I'm really impressed with what comes out of those schools in terms of people and tech.
The weather in NC sucks in July and August; I personally find it too hot and humid. But that's what A/C is for. The rest of the year you have seasons. The Valley has better weather.
BUT BUT BUT.....nothing compares to Silicon Valley for the combination of vast amounts of (venture) capital, vast numbers of experienced tech people, including startup execs, a ton of tech startup infrastructure and a very fluid job market. The RTP area is chock full of startups, with more in the "we make stuff -- chips, materials, devices" category. Capital is much harder to find. There are good banks and lawyers and other services that startups need. Developers flood out of the local schools, but not all stay here. You can pay a developer much less than in the Valley, and (s)he can actually live on the salary (as you can rent a decent HOUSE for $1200, and buy a starter home for $130k).
I've seen multiple attempts worldwide to duplicate Silicon Valley. If I had about $500B and 30 years (I'm a little short of the former, and hope to make the latter), I could replicate the Valley, maybe. But I doubt it. The Valley pioneers were amazing people; check out the documentaries on the subject. They had perfect timing. It's hard to see the same confluence of events happening again, at least in tech.
Re: (Score:3)
I've seen multiple attempts worldwide to duplicate Silicon Valley. If I had about $500B and 30 years (I'm a little short of the former, and hope to make the latter), I could replicate the Valley, maybe. But I doubt it. The Valley pioneers were amazing people; check out the documentaries on the subject. They had perfect timing. It's hard to see the same confluence of events happening again, at least in tech.
Why SV is where it is is a perennial debate. Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan. The Traitorous Eight that left Shockley Semiconductor Labs to start Fairchild Semi were an amazing group and the real genesis of SV, but why were they in SV in the first place? Because Shockley was there, of course, but why was Shockley there? Apparently because his aging mother lived there. That's it. Happenstance, which is an explanation that many don't like. No other explanation is convincing though.
Stan
That IS Silicon Valley (Score:3)
For all practical purposes, San Francisco is part of Silicon Valley. Sure, originally it meant a small cluster of towns in Santa Clara county, but today Silicon Valley really includes everything surrounding the southern arm of San Francisco Bay. There are lots of people who live in San Francisco and work in Palo Alto. You just can't divide it up any more.
Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts (Score:5, Insightful)
>And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.
Have you been to silicon valley? There's plenty of bustle, just with worse traffic and no good restaurants.
Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts (Score:4, Funny)
And SF or Oakland has less traffic and bustle?
BTW, Oakland? Really, Oakland? Most of Oakland doesn't want to live in Oakland.
Some of us prefer having a house and a yard (Score:2, Informative)
I love living in San Jose. On the rare occation I want to do something in a big city, I can drive or take a 1 hour train ride to san franciso. I'm not sure why anyone would want to live in Oakland...
I'm not sure why another posted was complaining about restaurants in SJ, or the South Bay in general. There are both great little hole in the wall places, and some good proper restaunts too. I definitely can find better Pho in east San Jose than I can find anywhere in SF (I've looked). South Bay restaurants have
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I'm not sure why another posted was complaining about restaurants in SJ, or the South Bay in general.
My experience as a frequent visitor is that while there are definitely good places, there are also a surprising number of mediocre to poor ones. If you live there, or ask a local with decent tastes, you'll do well. If you walk into a random place because you have no other information, your odds of hitting something decent are much less than other areas I visit. I have no idea why.
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Yelp is your friend. I've had very good luck with it in Silicon Valley.
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Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts (Score:5, Funny)
You have to be nutters to live in SF.
Or fruits.
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San Jose is a hole and if you lived in the Bay Area long enough you would understand why. BTW, San Jose pretty much is Silicon Valley. Those suburbs are the suburbs of San Jose.
I agree and disagree. I've lived in San Jose for three years and moved to Morgan Hill last month. San Jose doesn't have a real downtown (the thing that comes closest is Santana Row), nor anything else that the big cities have (such as decent public transport).
But while SJ claims to be the "capitol" of silicon valley, it is not. Many of the big names are outside of SJ: Apple, Facebook, Twitter etc. Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Mountain View are full of tech companies, more than SJ. And where SJ does have the t
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Oh, and don't get started on Oakland. When you have documentaries named "Gangland Oakland", you know to stay the hell away with your 100k+ tech salary.
Except for the fact that if you were in the market for a very nice home with very nice views with friendly neighbors, you would probably choose Oakland over San Jose.
Oakland, +1
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Oakland is a big city (in terms of area, not population). There are _really_ nice neighborhoods, and it has a decent downtown. Great Chinatown. The gang thing will get less prevalent over time if Silicon Valley really does move there. If I had to choose where in the Bay Area to live, Oakland would be high on the list. For one thing, they have public transportation, unlike Silicon Valley.
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Have you been to silicon valley? There's plenty of bustle, just with worse traffic and no good restaurants.
Sure, but the traffic has always been bad, and there has never been good restaurants. If this is what it takes to "kill" Silicon Valley, then Silicon Valley would have never existed in the first place. People have been regularly predicting the death of SV since the 1970s.
I live in SV (San Jose, to be exact). The weather is great. My kids go to public schools that are in America's top 1%. The restaurants aren't as good as in SF, but they aren't that bad. Workwise, there is plenty of talent, and it is e
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Have you been to a big city? Palo Alto/Mountain View/Cupertino are like small towns in terms of level of bustle. Sure they have big roads, but they are generally otherwise pretty quiet places.
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There are tons of good restaurants in Silicon Valley. My favorite Korean soup place is in central Palo Alto. Fabulous Indian food. Sure, there's good food in Oakland and San Francisco, but it's population density and services that make those locations more desirable, not food. And really, neither San Francisco nor Oakland are particularly urban anyway—they're just _more_ urban than Silicon Valley.
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Yeah, the food is good except when they put cilantro on everything.
C'mon, the food in Alviso isn't that bad. Now the Mexican restaurants that try to be hip rather than serving Mexican food made by Mexicans in a restaurant owned by Mexicans, yeah that stuff sucks.
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they put cilantro on everything
I guess it sucks if you don't like it. It is everywhere. Personally I love it, although a lot of people think it tastes like soap. They should have a cilantro free side of the menu or something. Maybe a new restaurant, "Cilantro Optional".
Genetics (Score:4, Informative)
they put cilantro on everything
I guess it sucks if you don't like it. It is everywhere. Personally I love it, although a lot of people think it tastes like soap. They should have a cilantro free side of the menu or something. Maybe a new restaurant, "Cilantro Optional".
Interestingly enough, the cilantro quale is genetic. Cf.
Love To Hate Cilantro? It's In Your Genes And Maybe, In Your Head [npr.org]
It's just another allele, similar in concept to the one that causes certain people to have the inability to smell cyanide. I have certainly tested my cilantro sensory interpretation, but I hesitate to test cyanide.
You Don't Know What An Introvert Is, Obviously (Score:5, Informative)
Cities are a better way to be alone than the suburbs, if you like that. In fact you can be more anonymous in a city than in a suburb. And there are more things to do by yourself than in a suburb.
And one more very, very important thing: what most people think of an introvert is actually a myth [carlkingdom.com]. Being an introvert doesn't always mean wanting to be alone. In fact, most introverts like people too (really!). In general what the reality is, is that for most introverts, being an introvert means that when you need to power back up, de-stress and get centred, you do it by getting some 'me time'... being alone and relaxing, getting time to process/meditate on things you have experienced lately. And yes, you can be alone in a crowd. Extroverts, by the way, relax by interacting with people. People who just don't 'get' other people or don't want to be around them are actually classified as misanthropes... or sometimes having Aspergers syndrome. It doesn't mean introvert. I am a strong introvert. I hate the suburbs and love the city.
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Though I think part of the original point is that for many it is much harder to get downtime in the city since the population is much denser. I know plenty of introverts who really stress being in the city, even in private spaces. I also know plenty who are perfectly happy in such enviroments.
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Small cities aren't too much of a problem (~ 500,000 people) . Usually, you could always find somewhere to rent or own within four blocks, or within a bus-ride to downtown. And there aren't any wild-eyed drunk hobos crashed out on the streets either. Maybe a few homeless people selling "The Big Issue" and chuggers (charity muggers) trying get cash off you. And everywhere is within walking distance; doctor, dentist, stores, shopping malls. Large rows of apartments give you considerable anonymity.
It's the lar
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Re:Except, you're dealing with introverts (Score:4)
And introverts don't necessarily love the bustle of the city.
Don't count on it. It's actually easier to ignore crowds than it is to ignore individuals. An introvert (speaking as a die-hard card-carrying member) isn't necessarily a person who's afraid of people. We just don't get our jollies by dealing with people.
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Re:Only a fucking moron (Score:4, Funny)
Ummmmm... nah, too easy.
Maybe in CA.... (Score:3)
...but here in the Pittsburgh PA area, the suburbs are only a few miles from Downtown. We do have upper middle-class areas within the city, but the vast majority of the population would rather live in a suburb to avoid the crowds and crime that bleeds out of the poor areas and their associated gang issues. My house is 15 miles from downtown, across the street from a golf course, costs me 775/mo in rent. You can't rent a shoebox in SF for that much.
Really, tech is going to move away from areas like Silico
Re:Only a fucking moron (Score:5, Insightful)
Inelegantly worded, and I wouldn't go quite that far, but I tend to agree with your dislike of the city life in general.
Full disclosure: I live in the Silicon Valley.
I can't imagine the allure of places like San Francisco. They're dirty, overcrowded, and getting around requires insane amounts of walking because you're never going to find a place to park and you're taking your life in your hands if you actually drive up there. Half the places you want to walk, you're constantly being hit up by people begging for money (despite an ever-increasing homeless services budget—homeless are drawn to SF by the availability of those services, so the more they spend, the more homeless they get; you can't solve homelessness one city at a time—it must be fixed at the national level—but I digress). There are drugged out people lying in the streets. There are drug deals going down on the corner, and prostitutes drumming up business. And for this, people pay more to rent a small apartment than I pay in space rent for an 1800 square foot mobile home. Seriously, what the f***?
I know some people like the "hip" culture of bars and clubs in larger cities, but once those people get a few years older, the desire to go clubbing usually wears off, and they find themselves wanting to live somewhere safe and comfortable. Cities are not that sort of place. The young workers who still haven't figured that out can live in their San Francisco. That's the thing about the Silicon Valley: It's an easy commute from there. Companies that want to attract those young workers would do well to follow the lead of companies like Apple and Google, who provide buses down from the city, where workers can get work done while they commute.
As for the companies that decide to move to San Francisco, it's only a matter of time before they figure out that they need a balance between the young workers and their older, wiser elders, most of whom don't want to move to a city, will be much less willing to commute than their younger counterparts, and will be much less able to commute on commute buses because they are spread over a larger geographical area. It's easy to set up commute buses from a highly populated area to your campus in the suburbs. It's much harder to set up commute buses from the suburbs to a company in the city.
In short, the entire notion of this article is fundamentally founded in a false dichotomy and an incorrect assumption that everyone likes cities. Oh, and one final point: Anyone who says that "Workers want to be in Oakland" is probably holding on to real estate in that city that they can't sell because of Oakland having one of the highest violent crime rates of any city in this country. As far as I can tell, nobody wants to be in Oakland.... :-)
Re:Only a fucking moron (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to be implying that it's only the naive young kids who want to live in San Francisco, and the older wiser folks are the only ones smart enough to make the decision to live in the suburbs. Maybe you prefer the suburbs, and that's fine, but here's why your younger coworkers prefer San Francisco:
The problem with suburbs in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, is that suburbs don't scale. This wasn't as much of a problem for previous generations, but these days Silicon Valley has grown to a point where it is. The traffic along highway 101 is terrible and is not easy to avoid. Caltrain doesn't go everywhere and the connecting buses are slow and poorly timed. The place is too sparse to get by without a car, so you absolutely have to get one. On the other hand, San Francisco has good public transport within the city (although not so much out of it heading into the valley). And that's only if you need it - it's also the second most walkable city in the country after New York. I think cars were once viewed as a symbol of freedom to previous generations, but these days they are seen as a ball and chain which ironically ends up limiting your mobility.
Also you may disagree with this, but to me it's also a much more pleasant environment - the Victorian housing, the city skyline, the parks and the waterfront along the Embarcadero and the Marina look beautiful compared to the suburban houses, office parks, shopping plazas and the freeways that connect them.
And as for crime and homelessness, if you exclude the bad neighbourhoods (Tenderloin, the dodgy part of SoMa west of 6th and the dodgy part of the Mission east of Valencia), then there's really not a lot of it. There are also an idea that, despite perceptions, the extra driving that comes with living in the suburbs is more dangerous than the crime in the city [latimes.com].
The article is not great, but it's more based around the idea that there is a generational trend towards urban living. It's wrong to think of it as either "everyone wants to live in the suburbs" or "everyone wants to live in the city", but when compared to previous generations more of Generation Y prefers city living.
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There is lots of crime in cities, but there is also a lot of people in cities, so the amount of crime per person present in the city at any time (many of who sleep in the suburbs/exburbs) is not particularly high. If you factor in that most of the crimes that happen in cities are crimes where the victim is either a criminal themself or a person from the underclass, often a sex worker or a drug addict (or both), cities begin to seem like rather safe places for most people. Just watch out for pickpockets.
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Apple would have been better building their campus into a Tensegrity Sphere [wikipedia.org]. Then they could relocate their campus whichever city offered the cheapest airspace taxes.
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s/country/planet/
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As long as you don't mind living in an oppressive Communist nation.
We're working on it. We're certainly well down the spying-on-citizens part.