

Silicon valley is weird.... - aginn
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/08/27/what-are-some-things-the-outside-world-would-be-shocked-to-learn-about-silicon-valley/

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redstar92
I had multiple work opportunities to move to SF area from Chicago and declined
them all based on family and employment ties to midwest. After reading this
article I just dont know how a an upper middle-class midwest product
manager/engineer with couple of kids and a wife makes this move in a
financially responsible manner. Would love to hear some feedback from you guys
on this.

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ChuckMcM
Like most places we run the gamut from 'hipster ville' to 'vanilla ville'.
There is San Francisco which has all the same sort of complexes any urban city
has, to the towns along the peninsula (notably San Carlos, Mtn View,
Sunnyvale, Santa Clara) which are pretty suburban, to pricey (Los Altos, Palo
Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton), to remote (Scotts Valley, Los Gatos, Santa Cruz,
Big Basin, Halfmoon Bay) to intellectual hangouts in the east bay (Berkeley
and its neighboring towns).

We have decent rail service (Cal Train on the Peninsula and BART on the east
bay) to get around, and of course people do drive. We've got both public and
private schools that are considered top schools in the country, and of course
there are failing schools as well. Our state government is pretty
dysfunctional at the moment. Oh and the weather is really really nice more
often than not. Oh and if you go north of the Bay there are a bunch of great
places as well from Sausalito to Novato to Petaluma to Santa Rosa.

There is so much variety then the nine bay area counties that its been called
its own country by tourists.

There are places where it is expensive and there are places where it is
moderate, in general housing is a bit hard though because when a company goes
public and mints a bunch of millionaires or nearly millionaires there is a
brief run on housing as people go out, buy a house, and convert a variable
priced asset into a fixed price one. Generally though for the same money the
houses here compared to Chicago will seem like a big downgrade. ( I know two
folks who went the other way, Bay Area -> Chicago, and they were quite
thrilled )

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ChuckMcM
Sigh, this is how we're portrayed to the world?

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redstar92
Unfortunately, yes (from my unfairly biased midwestern perspective) (and I
know that I am certainly wrong but would love to see your version of this
article :)

