
Tech's center of gravity shifts north to San Francisco - agwa
http://www.itworld.com/software/286835/techs-center-gravity-shifts-north-san-francisco
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rickmb
Sounds healthy. I'm certainly not alone in being a city person who wouldn't
want to live anywhere that doesn't have everything in walking/cycling
distance, good public transport and all the other features of a dense urban
setting.

I wondered how long SV could continue to bitch about talent shortage whilst
ignoring such a major portion of the population. Especially young and
ambitious talent tends to gravitate towards the lifestyle of major cities, and
has been for generations. Why would tech be an exception?

I'm guessing a lot of young people currently employed in Silicon Valley
consider living there a (minor) sacrifice rather than a perk.

~~~
tomkarlo
There's lots of companies already doing this. Every morning in SF you have
hundreds of buses filling with young folks commuting to work down at Apple or
Google or Facebook. Uniformly, the age range on the bus is 22-35.

The larger tech companies aren't moving to SF any time soon. Too many of their
execs and employees want to live in houses, and there just isn't space in SF
for campuses that will hold ~10,000 employees, nor many skyscrapers available,
either. Plus there are still prohibitive tax issues to being in SF, unless
(like Twitter) the city cuts you a break.

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dredmorbius
I'm still waiting for the tech world to discover the East Bay.

It has Oakland and Berkeley -- not cities on the scale of SF, but offering
reasonably dense downtowns and cultural life.

BART vs. CalTrain. Readily commutable, with 4-15 minute headways and highly
reliable service from 5am to midnight, rather than the often 1-hour interval
schedules and mid-day lapses of CalTrain. Some of the newer CalTrain livery
beats BART, but the latter is upgrading soon.

Access to a much broader (and cheaper) housing stock: Alameda and Contra Costa
counties, with commutes via BART, 80, 580, 880 and 24. Granted, many of the
highways are chronically congested, but less so than 101, and more useful for
commutes than 280, which is largely a high-speed SF - Palo Alto/Cupertino
link.

Options for much more dense infill development without the Penninsula's
NIMBYs. Granted, there are the East Bay NIMBYs, but they're slightly less
focused and rabid.

SF does have considerable growth opportunity available, though existing
transit is stretched, and there remains resistance to growth. That said,
development in the SOMA / China Basin area in the past two decades has been
pretty considerable.

Edit: and of course, UC Berkeley. Not Stanford. But more than a match.

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tryitnow
It's tragic that the SF city government is so set in its ways. There's a lot
of people who are priced out of SF because of the city's reluctance to
increase housing stock and to maintain rent control.

~~~
205guy
War is peace, freedom is slavery, and rent control prices people out of SF.

SF has limited space. Price is not the only way to allocate space. Local
government can, within limits, set other ways such as rent control
(essentially a form of seniority). The local government representatives are
democratically elected in seemingly uncorrupt elections, so I have to assume
this is the will of the majority of the city residents. Get over it and deal
with it.

~~~
qq66
SF has limited space mainly because city homeowners lobby against new building
permits. 418 housing units constructed in SF in 2011 -- do you seriously think
that in a city with $3000 one-bedroom apartments, there aren't hundreds of
real estate developers who would build new units here?

The will of the majority is no evidence of fairness or moral rectitude - the
will of the majority is what was responsible for slavery, institutional
racism, and now marriage inequality.

~~~
205guy
I think you have that backwards: city homeowners lobby against new building
permits because SF has limited space. They feel their neighborhood is plenty
crowded, their views are blocked quite enough, and traffic is already
congested, etc. Hundreds of developers at 5-100 units each will significantly
change the density and life experience in the city.

I was referring to the will of voters as opposed to a cabal of corporations or
corrupt influences. Obviously, majorities that impinge on civil rights need to
be overruled. It is not a civil right that just because you want to live in
the city and you have more money than a current resident, you should be
allowed to do so. Nor is it a civil right for a developer to build an
oversized and overcrowded building when their property zoning allows a modest
residence.

~~~
qq66
Any right that the government grants to a person impinges upon another right
held by someone else. If you grant someone the right to live in a rent-
controlled apartment you're forcibly removing the right of the property owner
to rent out his/her apartment at any terms.

It's not like any of these rights are free, they come at steep costs, and it's
hard to say who should actually be the stakeholders of any given decision.
Should it be the people owning property in the city? (that's how decisions in
condominium buildings are made -- by owner's vote, not by resident's vote).
Should it be people living in the city right now? Should it be people who
would live in the city if the measure in question was adopted? How much
influence should people in one neighborhood have over what happens in another
neighborhood (i.e., should there be a neighborhood level of city government,
and what powers should it have relative to the city government?)

The same set of stakeholder definition issues come up when thinking about
granting work visas to a foreign national -- should that individual's desire
to work in the United States be part of the decision to let him in, since once
you do, he'll be a voting American citizen, or should he not have a say in
that decision since he's not yet a citizen?

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egometry
A lot of my silicon valley peers and I opted to live in the SF area and
commute south for work because we found SF & Oakland far more entertaining on
nights and weekends.

As more and more tech jobs became available in SF itself, we started taking
them.

~~~
bengl3rt
I commute from SF and I hate it. Two hours of my day are spent on a bus five
days a week.

I hear Google has an office in the city and, if you do your time in Mountain
View and they like you and want to keep you, they'll move you up to the city.
I'm sure Apple, FB etc could do the same.

~~~
jimmywanger
That is incorrect.

Tranferring to sf is almost always done as a team move, and they will not let
you transfer up to the city if your new team does not already ahave a sizeable
contingent up there.

It is not a carrot or a reawrd, it mainly has to do with team chemistry and
logistics.

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stephengillie
"Because Palantir has taken over all of the available office space in Silicon
Valley, the Startup Bubble has shifted and grown. The Bubble now encompasses
the majority of San Francisco, in addition to the Valley and its other
territories."

(not from the article)

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ilaksh
I like to think that I am ahead of the game. My startup is so lean and
progressive, not only do I have very few employees (none) but once (if) I am
(ever) ready to hire, I have the ultimate address for my headquarters: the
internet.

~~~
bengl3rt
Hear hear. It's all about remote employees these days. You miss the best
talent by only looking at ten square miles of a huge planet.

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FlyingSnake
Wasn't San Francisco already part of Silicon Valley?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Technically no, the 'Valley' that is Silicon Valley is actually the Santa
Clara Valley. But for all practical purposes everyone in the 9 bay area
counties consider themselves to be part of 'Silicon Valley' at one time or
another.

