
London vs San Francisco – back and forth - edfryed
http://jh47.com/2016/03/01/london-vs-san-francisco/
======
mattlondon
I visit SF and Silicon Valley fairly regularly from London (where I live so
potentially biased).

I am always, always, always shocked by the homelessness (and the mental state
of those poor souls) in SF. People call London a dirty, unfriendly city but
I've _NEVER_ gotten any trouble from any of the homeless people in London
apart form the usual begging, yet in SF its pretty much guaranteed you're
going to get hassled/shouted-at/shoved/threatened by one of the homeless
people once or twice per visit as you just go about your business.

I was considering moving to SF to work a while back. Housing is not cheap for
sure, it is probably around about the same as London ... except in London if
you pay $4000/month you dont get a vagrant shitting on your doorstep.

It is a genuinely shocking situation in SF. I am permanently shocked by the
homelessness. It is terrible but no one seems to want/be able to do anything
about it.

~~~
scarmig
We do manage to spend a quarter billion dollars a year on homelessness in San
Francisco, amounting to tens of thousands per homeless person. And that
doesn't even count costs that hospitals and medical centers have to spend on
ODs, various stabbings, etc. So finances aren't the issue.

If I had to identify the issue, it's that there's a lot of status quo players
who comfortably exist in the current state of things (after all, that's a lot
of money floating around). The people who suffer worst from the state of
affairs (the homeless themselves) pretty much have no political pull or people
looking out for their well-being, and the rest of us get shouted down if we
complain about having to step over used syringes and human shit as we open the
door to our apartments every day ("you think you have it bad? Think how bad
they have it!")

Last month, I was walking through SoMa with my boyfriend, and a homeless guy
literally came up and punched him in the back of the head for absolutely no
reason at all. He walked off, we called the police, an officer came, and his
response was basically.. "well, what do you want me to do about it? There's no
point in arresting him." Even though the perp was standing on the corner like
half a block away.

As a city, we need to decide whether the homeless are autonomous people who
can be held responsible for their actions, or whether they are desperate souls
who really can't be expected to care or look out for themselves and really
don't have any "rights" beyond being treated humanely and compassionately.
Only the latter really makes sense in my view, but this in between place of
"they can do whatever they want no matter the ill effects on the community,
but we're morally required to continue to throw hundreds of millions of
dollars at their self-described champions every year with no improvement in
the situation" is ridiculous.

~~~
AJ007
Is homeless the right word to use here?

This word is used to describe a very wide range of people, some of who are not
homeless. Americans are very tolerant. Many have no problem handing a heroin
addict cash and actually feel really good about themselves after doing it.

I've walked Manhattan alone at all hours, I've been in the worst neighborhoods
of Chicago, bad neighborhoods in Brooklyn, major cities in the developing
world alone on foot at night with no other caucasian in sight, all over
Mexico, along with many other places and the one place where I am very aware
of my surroundings and concerned is SF. I do not live there and never have, so
that is as much opinion I can give.

------
stickydink
I moved here with my wife from the UK on a H1-B a few years ago now.

Three weeks ago we drove (less than 1hr) to Stinson Beach, spent all day
hiking the hills, spectacular views of the Bay, the City and the Farallon
Islands in the distance.

Two weeks ago we drove to Monterey, took a Whale Watching boat ride for a few
quid. We spent an hour watching a group of Orca hunt Sea Lion a couple hundred
feet away.

Last weekend, we drove to Tahoe. Spent two days learning to ski, hung out with
friends in our cabin.

This is all in February, the weather has been great. I don't know what we're
doing next weekend, but it's probably not something that was in driving
distance back home.

It's obviously a personal preference thing, but for me, the lifestyle matters
far more than the job. Both me and my wife couldn't stand London any more.
It's great for a visit, but that's my fill.

~~~
arethuza
Edinburgh here - we've got the hiking, spectacular views (and then some),
islands, aquatic beasties, skiing 2 hours away. Even some nice big bridges.

You may have a point about the weather though! ;-)

[NB Obviously I forgot to mention the history, culture, the festivals, an
ancient castle on the plug of an extinct volcano, glorious architecture....]

Weather can be a bit grim though.... (and has been particularly miserable this
winter).

~~~
m1sta_
2hrs to skiing where?

~~~
cmdkeen
Glencoe 15cm of snow on the ground today according to Google.

I live in Edinburgh and have always been able to live less than a 15 minute
walk from work, often in my own flat, for very reasonable sums. Everyone I
know in tech has been able to afford their own property within 6 years of
starting work.

I'd choose here over London any day of the week. You sort of get used to the
weather eventually...

~~~
arethuza
One of my colleagues, who is from Spain, was struck by the speed of the clouds
when he moved here.... :-)

------
nakedrobot2
This is like Stalin vs. Hitler

London: gloomy, tremendously overcrowded, stressed people everywhere, binge
drinking until 11pm and then you're out of luck, spineless european investors,
and a cost of doing business so high due to high rents and expenses, that the
Startup scene is really a non-starter.

SF: The frat boys have won, the nerds are a long-gone memory, the city is
eating itself with brogrammers while america's homeless population of
unfortunate veterans and mentally ill, pile up on the streets, looking in on
the privileged class. The gridlocked system prevents even basic infrastructure
enjoyed by most other civilized part of the world to exist (trains, housing,
etc.)

Hitler vs. Stalin.

Live somewhere else. It is a wonderful world out there.

Try Prague for example. Safe, easy, cheap, full of great tech talent. Just to
give one example.

~~~
lgieron
> Live somewhere else.

There is a catch though - for programmers, London is by far the best paying
city in Europe (except maybe Swiss cities).

~~~
onion2k
In terms of gross salary, absolutely. In terms of net earnings after paying
for the cost of living in London, probably not. I'm quite sure I could double
or even triple my salary by moving to London, but my quality of life would
very likely go down. For a start, where I live I can afford to buy a house. On
a multiple of my income in London I don't think I could do that.

I see no value in earning more just to pass the money directly to my landlord.

~~~
lmm
Remember that your savings are measured in absolute terms. If outside London
I'd earn x and spend 25% of it on housing and in London I earn 2x and spend
50% of it on housing, I'm still earning more non-housing money in London. And
in the case of paying a mortgage then at the end of it all you sell the house,
so the extra expenditure isn't "lost".

Quality of life comes down to personal preference. I'm not sure there's
anywhere else I could live (at least without having to learn another language)
and not feel any need to own or use a car, the pub theatre scene is probably
the best in the world (likewise the museum collections), a huge range of
musical performances, and it's the best place to find people for specialised
hobbies (netrunner in my case, again literally the best place in the world for
it in terms of the community size). Of course other places have their own
selling points, but London has a lot going for it if you like that sort of
thing.

~~~
osullivj
I lived in London for 12 years, and earned good money working in banking. I
loved it for all the reasons you spelled out. But then the financial crisis
happened, the banks started firing people, we got burgled three times in one
year, and I got mugged at knifepoint. We moved out to the countryside where
our kids could go to good state schools and found that they stopped having
asthma attacks. I earn less money, but I'm much less stressed.

~~~
lmm
It's worth saying that despite what one hears in the media, both burglary and
knife crime are continuously falling.

But sure. I think age, kids and general lifestyle make a lot of difference;
for a lot of people London delivers more of what you want when you're young,
but the countryside is better as you grow older and your priorities change.

------
sulam
So, I moved to SF in 1994 in my early 20's, which means my bona fides are
longer than the OP, but still not native. However, from the greater baseline I
can say a few things that won't be easily available to someone having lived in
SF for a year:

1) public transit has sucked since well before the tech boom. When I moved to
SF Oracle was probably the northernmost tech company of note (not counting
Autodesk in San Rafael!) and the center of mass was decidedly in Mountain
View. Today center mass is probably Foster City or perhaps Burlingame. Also,
because the commute was only slightly less bad (CalTrain in particular hasn't
improved much over the intervening 22 years) and there was no shuttle system,
very few people chose to live in SF and commute south. And yet Muni was awful
-- I worked in "Multimedia Gulch" (what the area around South Park used to be
called) -- and typically if I wanted to get to work in any reasonable amount
of time I had to take a cab. Today you'd take Uber, but same story.

2) Homelessness / dirtiness were just as present, if not worse. The Mission
corridor was much worse, and parts of the Tenderloin have made huge
improvements. Not to mention the tent cities around Rincon, the dramatic
difference in the Embarcadero, Hayes Valley, and the Presidio. The Sunset and
Richmond are mostly unchanged, and Visitacion Valley is still a part of town
no one you work with goes to. :)

3) Housing prices -- ok, this is the one place where things truly have gotten
incredibly, insanely worse. My efficiency in the city cost $600/month in
October 1994. An equivalent space today costs $2100/month. There's a lot of
things contributing to this, but I honestly think the shuttles are a huge part
of the demand side of the problem. And of course the supply side has many
well-documented shortcomings.

3) The number of silly companies getting started? Well, companies are just
people, and honestly the number of silly people with crazy ideas in SF feels
mostly unchanged. Their motivations are dramatically different, though. Today
many of the most silly ones are simply in it for the money. Back in the
mid-90's the people with rich fantasy life were all artists of the starving
type. ;)

~~~
henson
Author here. This is fascinating to read! I (naively) assumed that things were
better across the board prior to any of the tech booms. I lived in SF and
commuted to San Mateo which was a non-trivial trip (coming from the tiny UK)
and the BART/Caltrain combination was horrendous for different reasons
(Caltrain was unreliable, BART was dirty). I did notice that a lot of the
Caltrains were old Japanese trains from the 80s. Also, my rent here in London
isn't that much different to my rent in SF, but I'm told I got very, very
lucky there. Thanks for reading!

~~~
dboreham
I don't remember anything prior to the mid-70's but I have a distinct
impression that cities everywhere in the western world were much dirtier and
crime-ridden in the past (things began to improve around the 1980s, or Rudy
Giuliani time).

~~~
ghaff
That's certainly true of the US in general. The standard narrative is that it
was driven by "white flight," which in turn reduced investments in urban
infrastructure, etc. Like many narratives, there's some truth in it but it
doesn't really account for the fact that at least some Western European cities
were also dirtier and more crime-ridden than today.

Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993, which did line up pretty well with New
York getting cleaned up a lot. However, this was a more general trend even if
it didn't apply everywhere (e.g. Detroit).

------
dmix
Regarding the "how did these guys raise so much money?" thing. I'm afraid this
is mostly just a sampling bias - one that I've experienced as well.

Here's why: the people who forever can't find good talented engineers are
usually the bad companies with bad ideas. Getting capital from MBA-educated
VC's isn't _that_ challenging or any significant validation of success
(although still a notable one).

So you are more likely to come across a large number of the crazy ones who
can't find engineers/designers during your recruiting phase coming from out of
town.

Once you build a network you will start to be invited to work for good
startups and smart people. Good companies recruit via networks until they
reach scale.

~~~
CM30
I don't know about that. I'd say over in the UK (and maybe a lot of places
outside of the US), investors are definitely more cautious about how much
they'll invest. I mean, over here, getting an investment of a few hundred
thousand pounds is treated like a decent deal, where it's seen as pocket
change to a Silicon Valley investor.

Which all kind of feeds into why getting talented engineers is difficult here.
Cause the money you raise isn't enough to pay the kind of wages they're used
to in San Francisco, nor market the business quite as much.

And people are definitely more cautious here too. Over in the US, it seems
people will start a business or invest in one on the off chance it might
potentially succeed at some distant point. Over here, it's 'prove your
business is making/will very quickly make money or get out'. And the good
engineers (if they haven't moved somewhere with better wages) will probably be
at larger companies, which their friends and relatives say is a 'safe' career
choice.

------
kinnth
I currently live in London and have never lived in SF but have travelled every
year for GDC (games developer conf) for 1 week a year.

I tend to agree with the author. The place is lovely, it's almost like a
heaven on earth with almost all ameneties, temperatures and people within a 3h
driving time from SF, but for some reason London with it's grey grimey and
dirty history has more appeal. Perhaps it's the fact that you can explore and
get lost down a back alley, or that your friends tell you about this new bar
which started up but is in zone 4 and you just have to see it.

I also like the fact that Tech is an asside and people are key. I don't want
to live in a bubble but I love what I do. I admire mingling with the theatre
crowd or simply watching the tourists navigate the bus timetables.

I think everyone has their preference, but both are fun for different reasons.

Now if you want a real up and coming tech city, I would suggest Berlin.

~~~
wozniacki
People generally agree that it rains between 140 and 160 days a year on
average, in London.

Do you ever get acclimated to the constant soggyness / dampness, the mugginess
& the lack of steady bright sunlight even if you were born & raised there ?

Especially when you have to live in such small quarters without ample
backyards, which are puny even by SF standards.

I don't know if Seattle gets such frequent rainfall although the total
rainfall might actually be higher [1]. But I couldn't live in a place
enveloped with constant dampness. It just drives me nuts. Dryness is something
I've to have.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-rain-so-often-in-
London/an...](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-rain-so-often-in-
London/answer/Tom-Goodwin-9?srid=3oHY&share=7e506d3c)

~~~
Symbiote
> constant

Nothing about the weather in England is especially constant. On average, it
rains more than some places. But mostly people appreciate the change — it's
nice to have a week of clear blue skies in the winter, but it wouldn't be
appreciated if the whole month was like that.

And, of course people are acclimatized to it. People are born and used to
living in Greenland, or the Sahara. London is easy!

San Francisco is actually more humid in the mornings than London, year round.

Look at the bottom for average conditions (humidity etc):

[http://www.bbc.com/weather/2643743](http://www.bbc.com/weather/2643743)

[http://www.bbc.com/weather/5391959](http://www.bbc.com/weather/5391959)

------
jritchie
_In London, tech does not rule the city. No single industry does. Not even
finance._

Apart from the City, which is quite literally ruled by the finance industry.
[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Elections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Elections)

~~~
lmm
The City is one small area where hardly anyone actually lives.

~~~
jritchie
Approximately 7,000 residents [1], but over 400,000 employees. [2]

[1] [http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/environment-and-
plan...](http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/environment-and-
planning/planning/development-and-population-
information/Pages/demography%20and%20housing.aspx)

[2] [http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/business/economic-research-
an...](http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/business/economic-research-and-
information/statistics/Pages/research-faqs.aspx)

~~~
tomp
Exactly. So it kind-of makes sense that those workers are represented in local
elections as well (via their employers), don't you think?

------
eistrati
Very interesting read, but also very sad. I think the local authorities in San
Francisco are the ones that have to wake up and invest quickly into growing up
the infrastructure to accommodate the influx of talent. Otherwise the exodus
will hurt everyone and it's already happening (e.g.
[http://qz.com/627414/tech-workers-are-increasingly-
looking-t...](http://qz.com/627414/tech-workers-are-increasingly-looking-to-
leave-silicon-valley/))

~~~
generic_user
The housing situation has been in the same state with the same dynamics for
over 20 years even before the first bubble started in 2000.

The vast majority will simply never be able to afford a house there. The only
way that could possibly be attempted would be to build massive condos
everywhere like you see in some Asian cities. That would kill the character of
SF. No one wants to have a huge condominium plunked down into there
neighbourhood and I can't blame them.

~~~
david-given
Come to Switzerland. Four to five story apartment blocks everywhere; quiet,
green, safe, underground parking everywhere, gorgeous and huge flats at
reasonable prices, and despite having a pretty high population density it
feels way less crowded than my old terrace in the UK.

~~~
generic_user
Four to five story apartment blocks is what a large portion of SF is already.
The peninsula is just very tiny and everyone wants to live there. The only
large scale development that developers want to do is massive condos. Its a
goldmine compared to anything more reasonable. Keep in mind this is in the USA
the property developers here could give 2 craps about keeping the city an
interesting and livable city.

~~~
ghaff
Which is why you have zoning which is what people complain about. In addition,
it's a lot easier in general to find a relatively undeveloped area and build
high-rise condos there than increase the height of multiple blocks of an
existing neighborhood by a few stories.

There are probably areas in the Bay where you could build some sort of tech
worker arcology if you really wanted to do so and spend enough money. But I
doubt people would really want to live there.

------
ozy123
I've lived and worked in the UK most of my life and moved to SF three years
ago. There were a few things you omitted in your comparison but probably won't
immediately apparent in the short time you were here.

Salary difference. On average Most decent experienced devs in London make
around 50-60k pounds which is around 80-85k dollars. An entry level dev in SF
makes anywhere between 90 - 120k dollars and most experienced devs earn at
least 120k dollars with the range around 110-150k. So roughly a 30-60k+
dollar/year difference.

Healthcare. Almost all the companies I've worked for have covered my
healthcare costs so I only have to pay copays - as an idea 20 dollars to see
my GP and 30 to see a specialist. I had 8 weeks of physio last year and my
total out of pocket was around 600 dollars including a CT scan, which I could
pay using pre tax dollars. So the overall cost was pretty low. I also got to
see a physio the same day rather than waiting 6 weeks+ on the NHS. My total
max out of pocket is 3000 meaning I don't pay anything more than that. Given
the significantly higher salary even if I were to hit my max it would still be
worth it.

The cost of living is comparable although certain things are cheaper - gas,
trainers(sneakers), car insurance to name a few. Food is roughly the same I
reckon.

Overall working in London vs working in the US I saved significantly more
money - it's not even close. Although a tin of heinz beans costs two dollars
so that's made a pretty big dent in my savings ;-)

~~~
laurencerowe
It is difficult to find a well paid senior developer job in London. I'm not
sure if this is the cause or effect of so many experienced developers becoming
freelance consultants. Rates of £500-700/day for long term contract work with
corporate / finance clients are fairly common, so you can easily double your
salary vs permanent employment (or work half the time.)

------
ninjaroar
Can anyone comment on the dating scene for heterosexual males in SF vs London?
I've been considering moving to SF, but the male-female ratio makes me think
dating will be hard and I do want to find someone to settle down with at some
point...

~~~
Swizec
I did the whole PUA thing for a while in SF. If you want to, going on 3 to 4
dates per week is doable, 2 per week is easy. Everyone is also very sex
positive so getting laid regularly isn't hard either.

After a few months of that I wound up liking a girl enough for more than a
first date. We were sort of living together within 3 months of meeting.

That last part happens fast in SF because rent is high and sharing rent helps.

~~~
SpeakMouthWords
>PUA

I'm assuming the person you're relying to is excluding borderline megalomania
from their calculations.

~~~
Swizec
My point was that if you want to, meeting a lot of women is not hard. Young
people in SF date a lot.

If anything, the hard part is finding someone who is willing to commit.
Granted, I have a skewed sample because of how I met people, but most of my
friends are facing that issue. Easy to date, hard to relationship.

------
jernfrost
I've only been briefly in San Fransisco. As a non American I think there is a
certain exhilaration with these American cities. All sorts of people talk to
you, while at the same time American cities to me often seem quite scary and
dangerous, but often in a kind of exciting way.

I remember my first day in San Fransisco in the tenderloin district. It felt
like I was walking in a real world grand theft auto with dangerous gang
bangers, people yelling and each other across the streets and gangs of though
guys on the corners. It was both exciting and scary.

But I also met very open minded and exciting people and went to some really
nice restaurants.

But as this Londoner describes it. All sorts of transport and infrastructure
seemed absolutely terrible in SF. I was surprised that this sort of tech
capital of the world was so run down in many ways. The airport was an awful
mess, and subway getting there was really filthy.

I've been to London a number of times. Kind of hard to compare. Despite being
much bigger I actually felt safer in London, and it has great public
transport. What the tech scene is like I have no idea. But I come from small
town Norway so London is way too big for me. My favorite city is Amsterdam in
the Netherlands.

~~~
cjslep
I've been to SF and Oslo for business. The homelessness in Oslo seemed only
near the Nationaltheatret, whereas it was much more widespread in SF. Granted,
I was there in the summer and have no idea where they would go come the hard
winter.

------
s3nnyy
A tech job in Europe does not mean Berlin or London. Zurich has the ETH
university and the biggest Google office outside the US. It is a great place
to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on par with the Bay Area.

Salaries are in the range of 7000 - 10.000 CHF / month after taxes and
apartments can be way cheaper than in San Francisco.

Zurich is expensive but als tiny. Almost everyone lives "in the suburbs" where
the rents are half as much and which only means a 10-15 min commute[1] to town
(using the superb public transport).

I am a technical recruiter with a software engineering background and I live
in Zurich. You find my email address in my HN-handle.

~~~
hollerith
Can an American citizen without a college degree and without a million dollars
in savings gain the right to live in Switzerland permanently ("permanent
residency") if he can get a job there?

~~~
s3nnyy
If you do not hold a Swiss / EU-passport, it is hard. A Swiss company can get
you a work permit, if they can prove to the authorities that no other suitable
candidate could be found in Switzerland / in the EU. This can be done if the
company really wants you.

So unless you are an expert in some field AND a company really knows you, the
chances are unfortunately low. :(

------
chillaxtian
favorite bit:

"The world is a big place, and it’s really not that unique. It’s not a utopia
to be built through a technological elite. It’s a city, where people live."

------
orthoganol
"London and San Francisco are very different cities; I like London more."

Sorry, but it's just such apples and oranges and talked about at such a vague
level in only 1 minute worth of content. It deserves a significantly more
detailed treatment if you want to do justice to the topic.

------
joecasson
I'm currently in the middle of a 7 month stint working in London, and I have
lived in SF for 2.5 years prior. Funny coincidence.

I don't think Henson is necessarily wrong about anything he says. Hell, I
actually like London a bit more than SF for some of the reasons he lists. But
it came across to me like he was more homesick than anything.

I'm curious what industry he worked in, and who he spent his time with. I'm
guessing tech based on the blog and the section devoted to it, but in any
case, that alone greatly determines how you'll fare.

Here in London, people are polite and always love chatting up the American,
but it is a little hard to make friends outside of work/housemates. The focus
on pub culture - while awesome - is a large reason for this, in my opinion.

I've been debating writing more about my experience. Maybe I'll do it to give
a voice from the opposite perspective.

------
scholia
Not sure why there's such a concentration on San Francisco: it's a much
smaller place than London (10m inhabitants).

As a Londoner, I've visited tech companies in San Francisco, but also in San
Jose, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and various
other places. They're not all the same.

However, in the UK, a lot of tech companies are similarly spread out around
the M4 corridor. Wikipedia says: "this part of the M4 Corridor is sometimes
described as England's Silicon Valley" and includes "Slough, Windsor,
Maidenhead, Reading, Bracknell and Newbury".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_corridor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_corridor)

That seems to me to be a more useful comparison....

------
patforna
I don't think there's an objectively best place to live. Some people like bars
while others like mountains. Some like crowds while others like solitude, etc.
And that's totally cool, because we're all different. I've lived 1 year in CA,
2 years in Sydney, 9 years in London and just moved back to Switzerland (where
I'm from) a few days ago. All the places I've lived in had their nice and not
so nice sides. Guess that, at the end of the day, it's about figuring out
what's right for you and accepting the tradeoffs. I, for one, am very grateful
that I'm able to choose where to live because not all of us can.

~~~
lmm
Yes and no. Different places are better for different things, but some places
do combine a lot of positive factors, and some places do combine a lot of
negative factors; I suspect there really are pairs of cities where you can say
that X is just better than Y for most reasonable criteria.

Even if you don't believe that, many people on this site have the choice
between London and San Francisco, so it's well worth exploring the differences
between them here.

------
dovdov
Thankfully both became great tech hubs, so you can easily avoid them.

------
dpatterson2008
Have to say this was a good write up. Having lived in London for 25 years of
my life I am now living in Toronto on a holiday working visa for a development
company. Never visited SF but the things I've heard about SF seems quite true.
This is an Apples and Oranges topic, but being a former Londoner I have to say
you will never be short of a job in the tech scene. To some degree I feel in
the climate we live in Finance and Technology is what is running the heart of
London right now.

------
yandie
I haven't visited the US but having been to London multiple times, it's not
THAT multi-cultural (maybe by British standard). It's definitely the most
multi-cultural place in the UK, but compared to Australia where I've been to a
couple times with my Australian fiance, it was a bit of a let down.

------
DrNuke
London? Manchester is equally viable for business, Bristol has better quality
of life and Edinburgh is top for arts. Each for 1/3 - 1/2 of the cost. Even
cheaper is Birmingham, and strategically located in the West Midlands. Who
needs the rat race in London if you work with computers?

~~~
oesmith
I'm looking forward to Google opening an office in Bristol. Until then, I'm
stuck on a daily commute from Bath to London.

The commute sucks, but I couldn't stand living in London (nor SF or the bay
for that matter).

~~~
lmm
Google's offices at Victoria? I can understand wanting to live outside London,
but surely there are optinos that would at give you a shorter commute -
Caterham? Epsom? Dorking? Sevenoaks? Brighton even?

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tamersalama
I have stayed in London for around 1 year. It's lovely. How easy it is to find
work in London (for a Canadian)?

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caoilte
Lots of work, but getting harder every year to employ people without visa.

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Synroc
Is it better if you're EU?

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tomp
I wonder what a similar comparision between London and New York would be...
Anyone has a good link?

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ghaff
This answer from Kim-Mai Cutler on Quora that I read recently seems pretty
spot-on to me. (She's also written about housing in SF.)

[https://www.quora.com/How-does-London-compare-to-New-York-
Ci...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-London-compare-to-New-York-City-when-it-
comes-to-quality-of-life/answer/Kim-Mai-Cutler)

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nipponese
He thinks SF is multicultural? By that standard Oakland must be Africa.

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neximo4
This comment isn't very good. For one thing Africa is very very diverse (heck
the most genetically diverse place on Earth) and full of different cultures,
including western cultures.

Also 'Africa' isn't very closed off to the rest of the world contrary to what
you may believe. Things have changed over the past few decades.

If you're going to generalise you might want to visit Africa before comparing
her to something else, or mention a city that is a more apt comparison to
Oakland.

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sehr
They're not saying Africa isn't diverse, they're saying if SF is diverse, then
Oakland is REALLY diverse (aka Africa)

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oldmanjay
It all depends on what you mean by "diverse" really. In some circles, it seems
to be a code word for "not white people" as if white people are all the same.

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sehr
If Africa was indeed used as an example of high cultural diversity, and we
agree it's mostly "non white people", then I don't think that would be an
issue here, right?

