Bay Area Livability

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a funded campaign against the Bay Area online. Where do you live, and where did you come from? I just moved to SF and yes it has homeless people, traffic and is extremely expensive, but these are things that every other big city I’ve lived in has. The costs and homelessness are worse than Seattle or NYC but not to the point that it’s a reduction in my quality of life. To say you have “no good opinions” is so extreme. The area is beautiful, has a rich history, amazin

Same - lived in SF for 3 years and while the tech side is cool, but in SF everyone's either homeless or soulless it seems

Well, I moved from Boston to the East Bay and love it here. My answer would be biased because I would live here even if tech was barely here.To me, the culture is incredible. I work from home so I barely have to worry about a commute. I go outdoors everyday and its often sunny. There's ample parks and even hiking trails near me, albeit being close to a city. I can't understand the appeal of living in San Francisco - too dense for my taste. But some of us find it worth it!

> Coming to the bay to live far from SF? What's the point?I don't regret a second of living 5 years in NYC. And I still have one friend there who, 15 years later, still lives that same life of partying until 2am, fancy restaurants, and whatnot. It sounds very exhausting.The vast majority of my friends back then have moved to the suburbs. Good schools for kids, a nice house in a quiet neighborhood with a garage for the minivan to drive those kids to cross country meets during t

Silicon Valley is stucco-corporate ugly. San Francisco is charming, yet now grossly-expensive. The two are linked by decrepit transport systems that are being supplanted only by Google/Yahoo/Facebook's own shuttles (services that do nothing for low-wage Valley workers or entrepreneurs trying to begin new endeavors).East Bay is charming and inexpensive. There are residents and young people who discuss more than option-pool restructuring and PHP/Rails. As long as I can continue to work in San F

While I live in the city and love it, his comment about not being able to make meaningful friendships made me think along the same lines as you did. I think he'd find parts of Oakland or Berkeley to be much more appealing. There's a younger vibe there from the proximity to the university and the lower housing prices that I think would work better for him. You do have to work a bit harder to feel "at the center" of the tech scene (i.e. you're less likely to hear conversat

Title really should be "Choosing New York over Silicon Valley" - the city of San Francisco is night and day different from bedroom communities like Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc.

I've never lived in SF but this is a reason why people sometimes mention how they prefer to live elsewhere. I've lived in Los Angeles and New York and I feel a nice sense of diversity in interests and backgrounds [of all forms] and I like it. And the tech communities aren't too small either.

After staying in SV for close to 2 decades and evaluating various other places to move to, I have ultimately chosen to remain in SV for the following reasons:1. Decent weather - no snow, wind, storms. This is changing recently with wildfires, so may not last for long.2. Density of tech talent - no matter what niche tech you are interested in, you will always find techies interested in that niche in SF - San Jose - Oakland triangle.3. Job opportunities - there are actually 4 subfactors h

Longtime lurker, never posted on HN before. I am a mid-career software engineer working for a hardware company.I don't live in the Palo Alto area and SF itself, because the cost of living is incredibly high. They are nice places for sure, and the social scenes there are more developed. You will have to pay to play there though.Housing is very expensive, rents are very expensive. I see it as a tax on job portability. The important upside is that SV is the center of the universe for int