
Even Techies Can’t Afford San Francisco Anymore - zgwhoa
https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/even-techies-cant-afford-san-francisco-anymore
======
jimmywanger
I don't think it's that they _can't_ afford San Francisco anymore, it's that
they don't _want_ to afford San Francisco anymore.

I'm in the same boat. The rent prices are insane, so much so that it's
actually cheaper to live in Las Vegas, fly in once a month, and get a hotel,
than to pay rent prices in the Bay Area.

I can elaborate if wanted, but I didn't go to college so that I could
graduate, plow my entire paycheck into rent, and live like a college student
again.

~~~
stevenwiles
> so much so that it's actually cheaper to live in Las Vegas, fly in once a
> month, and get a hotel, than to pay rent prices in the Bay Area.

That doesn't really make sense at all. Are you saying you only need to work or
be in the office "once a month"? Or does flying in "once a month" mean flying
in on the 1st and leaving on the 30th?

~~~
jimmywanger
[http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/rent-in-vegas-commute-
to-...](http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/rent-in-vegas-commute-to-san-fran-
save-money/)

If you can swing a four day workweek, is the key. Otherwise, if you can work
onsite only one week a month, Vegas (and other places) is the clear value
winner. You know, if you don't mind the airport.

------
dexwiz
What's the end game for this if nothing changes and new housing doesn't
materialize? Is it just a real estate bubble that will pop during the next
economic dip? If there is another tech bubble will occur in a city like
Seattle or Denver? Will the big players start to pack up shop and move to
cheaper cities, because even fresh talent now requires +200k just to pay rent?

~~~
sjg007
Constant influx of 100k recent grads and an efflux of others who didn't hit
the equity lottery to afford at a minimum a down payment..

------
erroneousfunk
As someone who graduated in 2011, I feel like I really dodged a bullet with
San Francisco. I've had managers in job interviews (even living in Boston!)
tell me that I was crazy for not moving west, in my position, that you had to
be in SF if you wanted to get into tech, do it now while you're young, etc.
One person flat out told me I wasn't really serious about tech because I
wasn't moving west. Recruiters assume that you'd be willing to relocate to SF,
friends are constantly moving there -- there were definitely a few times that
I considered it.

All said though, I think I've received much better opportunities in Boston, I
love being around a more culturally/educationally diverse group of people, and
I'm not sure the social pressures in SF would have molded me into a "better"
person. Honestly, I'd probably hate "SF me," and I couldn't have asked for (or
really wanted) a better early career than the one I'm having.

Although I have friends who are regretting their choice to move, and that
sucks, I have to admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude, watching
everything unfold in the last couple years. I'm sure San Francisco will be a
tech hub for years to come, and I'm sure other tech hubs will continue to
emerge, but it was a great early lesson for me that moving for a career often
isn't the magic bullet that people think it is (or that staying put is a death
sentence) -- especially in tech.

Certain extreme examples aside (it's hard to be a lumberjack in New Mexico),
"career options" should be only one factor in choosing where to set your roots
(or whether to set them at all), and, at a certain point, you can only take
advantage of _so many_ opportunities in a lifetime, so there is a saturation
point at which more of them become meaningless. Also, watch out for terrible
advice when you're young :-p

~~~
zubat
The Boston region was, once upon a time, thought to be competitive with SV.
But it fell behind in hype at some point during the 80's and never came back.
I would be unsurprised that it is a decent tech market even today!

~~~
erroneousfunk
Yeah, it's great! More than enough tech jobs to go around, "average" software
engineer salaries are only ~$10k less than San Francisco, and with all the MIT
and Harvard grads around, you get to hang out with an interesting bunch of
folks.

There are little hubs of "SF-like" technology centers, like Kendall Square:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square#Businesses_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square#Businesses_and_organizations)
and and the south Boston Innovation District (hate the name, it came from
Mayor Menino, but he was very successful at getting it running). But if you
walk a few blocks in a straight line, you can easily get out of the tech
bubble and go to a hundred year old Irish pub, or hang out with people who
don't know how to program, which is why I like it!

There's also the "holdover from the 80's" tech office parks in Burlington,
where MITRE is and Sun Microsystems (RIP) used to be. Lots of good newer
companies there too, and my husband keeps trying to convince me to consider
working in Burlington because real estate is so much cheaper, but I don't
think it's going to happen any time soon! The good thing is that all the guys
who used to work there are often working in the city now, so you get a LOT of
graybeards and people who developed Java, or Linux tools 30 years ago, or are
influential in the IETF hanging out. It's just a really great culture.
Obviously different from San Francisco, but I love it!

------
jankedout
"Even techies, who want to raise a family, can't afford San Francisco
anymore".

Dublin/Livermore is pretty cheap. If only more tech companies would take a
hint and start building East Bay locations. If your employees can't afford to
live close enough to your offices, then you should move your offices closer to
them, or where real estate is more reasonable.

~~~
zgwhoa
I think that's pretty reasonable. An alternative would be to create a culture
of working remotely without decreasing productivity. I remember reading
something about Buffer and their approach to remote work and having a more
distributed team.

------
IOT_Apprentice
So why are firms locating in SF rather than the valley or east bay where their
workers actually live? The commute to SF is long and parking fees are
ridiculous.

