
Go West - Altimor
https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/09/25/go-west-young-man/
======
zaphod12
The author notes most of the reasons why 'Move to SF' isn't great advice, but
then totally disregards them.

Maybe having to worry about stepping on a syringe isn't a way that someone
wants to live! Maybe it's healthy to meet and associate with people who aren't
in tech! Maybe you can get a great job working for one of those world class
companies and still get 5 job offers a week - they're all from recruiting
agencies, anyhow - and live somewhere far more livable (Austin, Boston or
Raleigh come to mind quickly).

Can't argue with the weather, though. Damn, Northern California has amazing
weather.

~~~
burlesona
I have lived in SF, Raleigh, and Austin and I would take either of their
weather over SF.

SF has chilly fog, high wind, and no sun or sky for 200 days a year.
Miserable.

I hear that South Bay is completely different, and I occasionally trek down
there on the weekends just to get a few hours sunlight. It seems a lot better.

And I don’t even live out by the ocean, I’m technically not in the crazy fog
zone.

I like living here overall but to me the weather is NOT a selling point.

~~~
kstrauser
> SF has chilly fog, high wind, and no sun or sky for 200 days a year.

San Francisco averages 259 sunny days per year:
[https://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/san_franc...](https://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/san_francisco)

I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

~~~
burlesona
I’ve looked up sources for that before and I believe they use the airport and
sometimes a weather station on Rincon Hill. Some of those also don’t count the
marine layer (is the fog). That’s probably twice as many sunny days as Alamo
Square (middle of the city near me) and three times as many as Sunset or
anything on the pacific side of town.

You can get a better picture of this on [http://fog.today](http://fog.today)
which has a tool showing historic cloud cover including the marine layer.

~~~
kstrauser
Sure, but most of the people SF / Oakland don't live in Sunset. Saying that
SF's weather is dismal just isn't true for the majority who live and work
here. Which isn't to say that _everyone_ experiences glorious weather daily,
to be sure, but it's pretty nice for most people.

~~~
burlesona
I’m saying SF’s weather is dismal to me. I’m not saying anything about the
rest of the Bay Area, or to people who like not seeing the sun from May 15 to
August 15 each year.

------
balefrost
"If you’re good, it’s not uncommon to see software engineers with 5-6 years of
experience make $300k-$400k per year in total compensation (which includes
your base salary, yearly bonus and stocks)."

So I've heard this before, but it never matches up with data that sites like
Glassdoor provide. Like, right now, the listings for "senior software
engineer" with 10-14 years of experience in SF seem to top out around $200k in
salary + bonuses, and that's the extreme upper end. The average is under $160k

Is the Glassdoor data bad, or is this a case of the author's information
merely being anecdotal? Or are we comparing apples to oranges - do such people
get 1/3 to 1/2 of their total compensation in stock?

~~~
Altimor
I've noticed that as well. The problem is Glassdoor very rarely actually
includes stocks (though they say they do ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯). All my friends making
$400k+ make more than 50% of that in stocks.

As individuals, we look at the world through a microscope, so all personal
experience is anecdotal. But these $400k+ earning SEs are a double-digit
percent of the engineers I know with 6+ years of experience (N > 10).

~~~
balefrost
Can you elaborate more on "make more than 50% of that in stocks"?

It looks like GOOG is up about 120 points compared to this time last year. Is
that $200k / year just from projected stock growth / dividends / etc? Do
employees in this situation get issued $200k worth of stock every year? Or is
it done via options? Is it a case of stocks vesting over time?

I find all this fascinating because it's so different from my experience. I
work for a software company in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I have about 15
years of experience (all over the place - C#, Java, some C++, JS, etc.). When
I compare myself to my local peers, I feel like I'm a pretty decent developer.

$200k+ / year total compensation seems absolutely massive to me, even
factoring cost-of-living adjustments. Like in the realm of "too good to be
true" or "results may vary". But now I'm wondering...

------
hacknat
I do think that you can get the same software experience in NYC, Boston,
Seattle, and probably Austin too. I always tell people to start their careers
in a big city or SV, but it really is an atrocious area to raise a family.
California is nice and SF is a cool enough city, but SV is just sprawl,
sprawl, sprawl. You’d expect more give the COL.

Anyways. I think this author has some serious rose colored glasses on, but I
think the basic advice still stands. The earning power you can command for the
rest of your career will be monumentally different if you start your career in
a city.

I started a career on the West coast and made enough of a name for myself that
I work remotely in the MidWest with an SV salary. There’s no way I could be
doing what I’m doing now if I hadn’t started in a city.

~~~
dmode
Why is it an atrocious area to raise a family ? I have kids and I think it is
an amazing area to raise children. Great diversity, getting to know people
from all over the world, year round hiking and outdoors fun, endless nature,
trails, parks, lakes, free concerts, movie nights, healthy food, fresh
produce, great schools (some are very competitive though). Great museums,
aquariums, oceans, bays etc. easy access to SoCal with all their theme parks.

~~~
hacknat
I was speaking from a monetary perspective. The affluenza in SV is downright
toxic.

------
ken
Are there any other cities that have survived as desirable places to live
after they've lost everyone outside of the monoculture?

To someone like me who has interests both in- and outside of software, there's
no question that San Francisco is the top place in the world for software
today, but that doesn't mean I'd want to live there -- any more than I'd want
to live in an highly productive industrial district.

> Beyond the opportunities you’ll receive personally, tech is currently
> reshaping the whole world — and San Francisco is at the center of it. I feel
> lucky every day, getting to witness what’s happening here. It’s often
> compared to the renaissance in Florence during the 15th century.

Except Florence was _all about_ art, and earlier in this blog post you
observed that San Francisco "chased away" all the artists. Those sound like
completely different environments. Life is not just about living at an
economic inflection point. Oil reshaped the world, too, but that doesn't mean
I'd want to have lived at a refinery in the 1950's.

> Some people get super annoyed when you say this.

I'm not surprised. If the only thing you take from the history of Florence is
that it was economically successful, I think you're missing the point. Quick,
name anything at all memorable from 15th century Florence that is _not_ about
art.

Even Florence couldn't survive without art. There were just as many merchants
living there after the Counter-Reformation began, but it couldn't save them
from the fall.

~~~
xvedejas
Last I recall checking, out of the residents of San Francisco, only about 5%
work for a tech company. And many or most of those people work in non-
technical roles. I think a lot of the feeling of a "monoculture" is self-
enforced; it happens because people in the same industry cluster too much in
where they live, what activities they seek, and how they try to meet new
people.

~~~
mc32
Imagine if artists and people in other industries looked around and saw people
just like themselves and cried "monoculture!" They could, I imagine. The
people who work a KQED probably interact professionally with other media
people, same for SFGATE. Now, outside of work, of course, if they have lived
here, gone to school here, then they should have formed friendships outside
those industries...

It's interesting to see people who move from elsewhere round the country come
to SF for a job and then winder why many people they know are in the same
industry. I'd understand the complaint if they grew up in STL, for example,
went to school there, got a job there and then only had friends in the
industry...

------
bobbane
"3 years in SF will not only have been an amazing experience you’ll always
remember; they’ll pay dividends for your whole life."

I lived in Mountain View in the 1980's, and I have found this to be true. My
wife and I left the area to be closer to our relatives when we started our
family, but every job I've had since that time was easier to get due to that
experience.

~~~
microtherion
The Swiss call this the ZAG degree that looks good on your resumé: Z'Amerika
gsii (Been to America).

------
david-cako
But I love Colorado. The weather is great year round (IMO), tons of sun, even
in the winter, which keeps it comfortable and melts the snow quickly. Boulder
is also more feasible for commuting than the bay area, allowing you to be
removed from Boulder housing prices (which are still not at bay area levels).

You also get a better variety of different people with different attitudes
(more so in Denver and CoSp), as compared to the ironically homogeneous bay
area tribe. I take an active interest in encompassing as many different things
and ideas as possible, and like having people around me that fuel that.

~~~
01100011
CO is amazing but damn.. that dry air. I can't live with a constant headache.

Also, for some reason, the fact that the lowest point in the state is around
3k' sort of freaks me out. I want my sea level oxygen and UV protection.

~~~
david-cako
Really, I actually love the dry air and am extremely humidity averse. I do
remember getting headaches when I first moved here though.

And we'll still be kicking if the rest of the country is underwater;
convenient vacationing to the Arizona Bay :^)

------
LyndsySimon
From my perspective, SV isn't an option for two reasons: I don't want to raise
a family there, and the politics of the Valley aren't compatible with my own.

I rarely see the latter mentioned, but it's increasingly a driving concern for
many Americans.

~~~
ur-whale
Can't agree with you more, the political atmosphere in the Valley and the
tech. companies is simply unbearable.

Living in the valley in general and _especially_ in SF basically means being
subjected to a daily deluge of left-wing ideology that the people living in
that bubble self-perpetuate and feed upon.

The Trump election came as a much deeper shock to the SF/Valley locals than
the rest of America: most people there were totally dumbstruck when he won.

The very idea that this was even remotely possible was simply not part of
their tiny self-contained world.

~~~
kenmicklas
Silicon Valley? Left wing? You've got to be kidding me.

SF is like the ultimate neoliberal bubble.

~~~
Altimor
This kind of comment is exactly what we're referring to. I'm sorry to be
blunt, but it's so false that I wonder if it's a parody. SF's government is
one of the most left wing of the entire country. Taxes are very high, the
economy is extremely regulated (getting a building permit can easily take 6-10
years) and there's a ton of public aid.

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
In case anyone is wondering SF county (& many of the counties around it) pay
16.2% of their income in taxes putting them in the top 20 of the country [1].
SF/Oakland have some of the longest waiting for permits for residential at
10.2 months on average [2]

I can't seem to find any good sources on exactly how much public aid is spent.

Because I was wondering, the SF MSA ranked 25th out of ~1k in terms of worst
income inequality [3]

All of these data points come from different sources and from different years.

[1]: [https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/map-income-taxes-
in-y...](https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/map-income-taxes-in-your-
county/)

[2]: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/building-permit-delays-
choke-u-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/building-permit-delays-choke-u-s-
housing-supply-study-shows-1468661402)

[3]: [https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-
us/](https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-us/)

------
GaryNumanVevo
_personal anecdote on monoculture_

It's a big deal, and hard to mitigate. I love tech, I get paid to know and
care about new technologies. However, when I'm not working I want to hear
about it less and less. My current roommate has very little personality traits
other than "hey I'm good at tech", he's also a self proclaimed "rationalist".
Other than that, we've got zero in common, he doesn't listen to music, doesn't
watch movies, only reads technical books.

I've met numerous people in the valley that have zero other redeeming
personality traits. Including myself (when I first moved here), I find talking
about climbing or hiking or biking or history is MUCH more interesting than
talking shop about various machine learning techniques.

~~~
jdhn
I completely agree. I'm not a developer, but when I hang out with people in my
field who can only talk about that field, it gets really old really fast.

------
eldavido
I live in SF.

There is a very clear trend of companies starting to look elsewhere for
talent, such that in the long term, I really doubt the tradeoffs of SF will be
worth it. The cost of living here is just terrible and I think companies are
starting to accept that the government and people just really don't want tech
to be here, at all.

Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:

New Relic - serious tech company - note how much elsewhere:
[https://newrelic.com/about/careers](https://newrelic.com/about/careers)

Carbon Robotics - Guadalajara -
[http://www.carbon.ai/careers/](http://www.carbon.ai/careers/)

Front page of the SF Chronicle:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-San-
Francis...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-San-Francisco-s-
fast-growing-tech-13227433.php) "Politics, economics and real estate could
make jobs boom elsewhere"

Absurd cafeteria ban - showcases the general attitude of the city government
toward tech, something between a never-ending money fountain to pillage, and a
nuisance: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed-
em...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed-employee-
cafeteria-ban-not-to-13121402.php)

Gecko Robotics, Pittsburgh:
[https://www.geckorobotics.com/](https://www.geckorobotics.com/)

Others offhand: Boston Dynamics, wherever Amazon puts HQ2 (I'm guessing
Atlanta, DC, or Pittsburg), Sendgrid and Gusto moving people to Boulder,
numerous great options in Seattle (Zillow, Microsoft, Amazon), tons of great
companies in NYC.

I really believe you have to skate to where the puck is going with this stuff,
not where it is now. In my view, the future is clearly "the rise of the rest".
Salaries have gotten so out of control, the only companies who can afford to
be here at the mega-tech giants (monopolies) who can afford the pay numbers
people are throwing around. It's not sustainable and I think there will be
major growth elsewhere in the next decade, especially as venture funding
starts to fan out, traditional industries start to figure out software more
(e.g. food processing in Chicago), and people in their 30s with 10+ years
experience want to start families and have to take care of parents.

~~~
dmode
Your examples are very few. May be to balance you can post some other
companies, like Uber:
[https://www.uber.com/careers/list/?team=engineering](https://www.uber.com/careers/list/?team=engineering)

Here is twitter, with 95 openings in SF:
[https://careers.twitter.com/content/careers-
twitter/en/jobs-...](https://careers.twitter.com/content/careers-
twitter/en/jobs-search.html?q=&team=careers-twitter%3Ateam%2Fsoftware-
engineering&location=careers-twitter%3Alocation%2Fsan-francisco-ca)

That is close to 400 openings for Software engineers in SF among just 2
companies. it will take a lot of New Relics to compensate for that kind of
demand. And I haven't even linked to Google, FB, Apple (each of them hire
thousands of engineers in SF), Lyft, Airbnb, Salesforce etc. I feel like the
advice in HN is more of what people wish it would be, but doesn't reflect. The
original article is spot on and is remarkably good career advice for anyone
who is starting out. Go West.

~~~
eldavido
All I'm saying is that there's a choice.

You have to ask, why will companies pay $180K or more in salary when
equivalently good people (and I really do mean this) are available at half the
cost elsewhere?

How is this sustainable long-term?

And to what extent is the behavior of young firms a bellwether for the future?
I really wouldn't bet against this trend.

------
nicholasjarnold
The site seems to be having intermittent trouble loading. Here's an
alternative link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/09/25/go-
west-young-man/)

------
shoguning
I would include more cities on this list. For starters, LA/NY/Boston/Seattle.
The software scene in Los Angeles is great right now. I don't have first-hand
knowledge of the other cities but they definitely have the reputation of being
great for developers.

~~~
joncrane
I'm not going to lie, after reading articles and comments like these, I
appreciate living in the DC area more and more.

There is really great hiking all around, a plethora of cool people to hang out
with and things to do, and it's not ridic expensive (It's just normal
expensive. Maybe bordering on ridic at times).

The only thing I hate is the traffic, but it's not too hard to find a job that
allows you very flexible scheduling (basically, the policy everywhere I've
been is that "core hours are 10-2, be here during that time unless it's your
telework day; pick a schedule and stick to it, try to make it to the office as
much as possible, and work about 8 hours a day and definitely 40 hours a
week.")

This allows almost anyone to optimize for their commute and get on with their
lives.

------
dmode
Solid advice (runs counter to most HN posts). But young people taking this
advice will truly benefit for it. I can personally attest to it, as my income
went up 8x just moving from Arizona.

------
cleandreams
I live and work in the Bay Area (close to SF). I was an early stage employee
at a startup recently acquired by one of the big tech companies. Didn't make
millions, but I did make hundreds. Honestly, I feel I'm living the dream. I
make more money than I thought possible and my job is super creative. I'm in
AI. The density of opportunity here is amazing. The startup I was at was able
to hire locally the depth of talent it needed to succeed. Fundamentally, if
you are talent or you want talent, you need to be here.

------
seansmccullough
Just move to Seattle instead. 0% state income tax, rent is half of SF, and the
tech salaries aren't that much lower.

~~~
01100011
That state income tax(or lack thereof)... It's like having $1-2k every month
of free money. That almost pays for the anti-depressants and full-time
counseling I'd need to move back to the PNW :)

Also, your traffic sucks... really, really badly. I grew up in the PNW and
whenever I'm back I cringe at the mess it has become. With all that money
flowing around, you'd figure they'd invest in some infrastructure. I know
they're trying but it's really not enough.

------
noncoml
> If you’re good, it’s not uncommon to see software engineers with 5-6 years
> of experience make $300k-$400k per year in total compensation (which
> includes your base salary, yearly bonus and stocks)

Can you please point me to one of these companies that pay $400k per year in
total compensation?

~~~
adventured
Depends on your experience and what you're working on.

Netflix famously hits those $400,000 type levels with total compensation, as
do Facebook and Google.

You can earn $300k to $500k in AI for example. And that's not just in Silicon
Valley, Google is paying that in Britain as well. [1]

For 2016, Juniper Networks had a median total compensation of $157,000 ($135k
median base salary). Emphasis that that was just the median for their
employees. You can imagine what the top 10% of their engineers are earning. I
mention Juniper because they never come up in these discussions, there are a
lot of tech companies paying extremely high total compensation figures in the
bay area.

VMWare's median compensation was $152,000 for 2016. So again, imagine what
they're paying the top 10% of their engineers. Not much of a stretch to guess
that a lot of them are earning $300k to $400k in total comp.

\---

"Tech Giants Are Paying Huge Salaries for Scarce A.I. Talent"

"Costs at an A.I. lab called DeepMind, acquired by Google for a reported $650
million in 2014, when it employed about 50 people, illustrate the issue. Last
year, according to the company’s recently released annual financial accounts
in Britain, the lab’s “staff costs” as it expanded to 400 employees totaled
$138 million. That comes out to $345,000 an employee."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/technology/artificial-
int...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/technology/artificial-intelligence-
experts-salaries.html)

------
jeromebaek
Having attended Berkeley, and gone through that "honeymoon phase", these kinds
of articles capture exactly why I left the Bay Area. Sure there's lots of
opportunities, but most are morally bankrupt. There's a reason the greatest
teachers have all said, clean your room before you change the world. San
Francisco can't even clean after itself. It's not going to make the world a
better place if it can't even take care of itself.

------
wallflower
I feel this would be a better essay if the author had put more of his personal
context into the essay. Like what has happened since he has “gone west”. It is
not clear how he became a product manager at Uber.

------
adomanico
This is sound advice even if that means only starting your career in SF. Once
you have an established career in the Bay Area you can command similar a
similar salary in other cities and live where you want.

------
sourceless
Good luck if you aren't a US citizen.

------
blablabla123
> 1-3 recruiting emails per week is normal.

Same for me, even before I lived in a fancy city. Some work experience with
stuff one finds cool is necessary though I guess.

(This might be obvious, but when you sign in to Monster.com or so, you get
even more, at least if you have some degree from a University or so... ;)

------
casper345
Originally from Bay Area, went to school, but so glad moved to a small city in
Texas. Good to explore other opportunities and everywhere people need
programmers

------
znpy
SF is very walkable! Just pay attention to human feces and syringes on the
sidewalks.

I am... Perplexed.

------
leroy_masochist
If only the monoculture problem were merely "tech, tech, tech"

------
goplusplus
The Stockholm Syndrome is strong with this person

~~~
badcede
The sour grapes are strong with the rest.

------
buboard
In 2018, "move somewhere to do a tech job" should not even be thinkable. Maybe
one needs to make a virtual city where VCs find entrepreneurs who hire remote
workers to work in a virtual office. Make it a VR space. But you don't need to
deal with moving to do all that.

------
captainbeardo

      I tried hard to convince a couple of friends to come.
    

This is Stockholm Syndrome

    
    
      You’ll earn more here than you would anywhere else.
    

Because the rent is proportionally expensive. If money is your focus work
remote in Indonesia for a bay area

    
    
      If you decide to move here, it means you probably have more ambition than average. Consider that everybody else you’ll meet in the Bay Area will share that with you.
    

I would say there is a greater chance that people share the same ambition when
it comes to tech, but you can't say Silicon Valley has more ambitions people
on average if most of them are slaving away at FAANG companies.

    
    
      California is stunning. It’s sunny year long
    

Not San Francisco

~~~
neonate
> Because the rent is proportionally expensive.

The article addresses that. For many people, the compensation more than makes
up for it, and often by a large margin, e.g. more than the entire salary you'd
make elsewhere, e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18067642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18067642).

The truth is that the author makes a ton of good points for ambitious young
people like himself, which is the audience he's addressing. Commenters who are
(justifiably) tethered to their lives elsewhere have a strong incentive to
deny this.

~~~
kstrauser
Furthermore, anything you can get off Amazon is proportionally cheaper. An
iPhone XS is expensive when you're making Midwest salaries, but not so much
when you're on a San Francisco payroll. A car doesn't cost much more in SF
than it does in Iowa, so as a percentage of your take-home salary it's
actually far cheaper.

~~~
Altimor
Exactly. Travel especially seems much cheaper on Bay Area salaries! I know
some people who moved to India, and told me that they'd actually be "richer"
once accounting for cost of living. Except they can't leave now, every trip
abroad is months of salary.

------
zemo
young people, please don't take the advice in this article seriously.

> My objective in this post is to convince you that you need to move to SF.

There are many ways to have an enjoyable life. Anyone telling you that you
have to make all of the choices that they made to have an enjoyable life is
worth ignoring.

~~~
Altimor
I mean, arguably people make their choices because they assume they're the
best given their conditions. It's not like it was totally random. Isn't it
worth sharing the advice with people in similar conditions?

~~~
zemo
> sharing the advice with people in similar conditions

this piece doesn't do that, since it doesn't analyse what the author's
conditions are prior to moving to SF. The reader is not armed with any useful
means of deciding whether the author's conditions match their own.

It's also full of sweeping generalizations presented as fact.

> If you’re in tech, you need to move to San Francisco.

that's a sweeping generalization presented as fact, without a hint of irony,
suggesting that if you're in tech and you -don't- move to SF ... then, what?
You've chosen poorly. You'll regret it. You'll be sad. You'll hate your life.

Hilariously, the author cites Amazon as one of the companies that are in SF,
but Amazon is from Seattle.

It says "the coolest companies" under the assumption that the reader shares
the author's values. It says this so plainly that it suggests that the author
is not even aware that other people could have different values from their
own.

> All the coolest companies ... Facebook, Salesforce, Uber

I don't think Uber is a cool company. I think Uber is an evil company that is
actively doing harm to society. There is no amount of money that Uber could
pay me to work there, because I think that they're unethical. Salesforce ...
cool? From my perspective, Salesforce is one of the least cool things that
humanity has ever produced.

> A pattern I’ve noticed is that newcomers here tend to fall in love with the
> city at first sight.

yeah I hate SF, and only go there begrudgingly for work. I would never elect
to move there. I know many people in the industry that feel similarly.

but of everything here, this is what I find the most damaging:

> 6 years later, as I predicted, none of them have come, and their roots have
> gotten deeper. They built companies or careers, took mortgages, got married…

the suggestion here is that people who decided to live a whole life have
somehow chosen incorrectly. I would be shocked by the arrogance, but the
arrogance of tech industry zealots has long since ceased to be shocking.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Nit - Amazon has a bunch of offices in the Bay, including Lab126.

------
microcolonel
I will say that a lot of this is self-reinforcing: huge SFO/SEA companies
offer competitive compensation, so the majority of people who have competitive
compensation live where they are offered, and this sends a signal to yet more
people that that's where the competitive compensation is at.

If you generated that much perceived value in Manchester, NH or Topeka, KS
then you could probably manage to have cash flow like that without being in
SFO/SEA. Yes, a lot of that value exists only because these people can see
eachother in coffee shops and meetups, day in and day out, year round, in the
same place; but once you're in, being in SFO or SEA is not why you're worth
paying that much.

