
New York Will Never Be Silicon Valley. And It's Good with That - mancerayder
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-27/new-york-will-never-be-silicon-valley-and-it-s-good-with-that
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wgerard
> the presence of other industries like finance, media and advertising

This is a huge part of why I didn't enjoy being in SF (admittedly for a very
short few months).

Every party I went to, most conversations I had (or overheard in a coffee
shop) were tech-related. It felt impossible to have a conversation about
anything else, and all conversations naturally gravitated towards tech like
some sort of awful singularity.

It's pretty refreshing regularly talking to people who work in the arts,
finance, education, administration, etc. If nothing else, just for novelty's
sake - more interesting conversations happen when you can't talk about your
work all the time.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Having spent the last few months living in the Bay Area after decades on the
east coast and Midwest I find the constant banter about technology refreshing.

In other parts of the nation that I’ve lived there is less mono culture but I
often hit a wall chasing my ideas.

In the Bay Area there is limitless possibility not just embraced but
quarterbacked by seemingly everyone I meet.

If New York or Chicago had a culture that not only embraced these other
wonderful cultural aspects of life but also had this focus of building big
ideas so deeply engrained in their way of life then I’d be there and not here.

That said, the rent is too dang high out in the Bay. Time to end NIMBYISM in
this state!

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colmvp
> ...much more racial diversity

Right, if you ignore the fact Asians make up a third of SV and hugely
contribute to the tech scene, the area is totally lacking diversity.

NYC is so superficially centered on appearances, that I would never want SF to
be like it. The type of strange ideas and interesting people I met in SF
wouldn't have thrived in NYC. It doesn't surprise me that something like YC
bloomed in SV, not in NYC, at least until it became a trendy industry. There's
a reason why industries that involve appearances thrive in NYC, such as media,
advertising, and fashion.

Don't get me wrong, I love NYC, I lived there for a number of years and missed
it when I moved to SF. But I've always disliked the sense of superiority that
NYC has over the rest of the country.

From my experience on living in both cities, NYC might be more diverse in
industry, but at parties I found people in SF to be far more open to more
thought provoking, controversial, and unconventional ideas.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
The Bay Area is a beautiful melting pot of ethnically Caucasian, Asian,
Hispanic, Black, and Indian folks that appears very diverse if you look at
physical appearance.

But if you have lived in S.F. and also New York, it's easy to see why someone
would claim N.Y. is more diverse. I think it has a lot to do with embracing
different ways of living. Its a pretty common joke how much conformity there
is in the Bay in a basic workplace enviroment, ie. wear this flannel shirt,
have 'x' opinion on social media, have 'x' political view.

New York isn't better or worse, but it feels like there is more variety in
your day to day interactions with different types of people.

~~~
jrnichols
> The Bay Area is a beautiful melting pot of ethnically Caucasian, Asian,
> Hispanic, Black, and Indian folks that appears very diverse if you look at
> physical appearance.

I noticed this in the Dallas/Ft Worth area too. What I also noticed was how
many friends in both NYC and SF were completely oblivious to the fact that
cities besides their own can also be rather diverse.

Both SF and NYC are constantly in their own bubbles, and I wish that they'd
break out of them more instead of dismissing 98% of the country as "flyover
states."

~~~
Caveman_Coder
I left the Bay Area for the Pacific Northwest (and not Portland or
Seattle)...the bubbles do exist...out here I can talk with my neighbor about
all kinds of things pertaining to farming, self-sufficiency, home repair,
electronics (as most farmers are pretty well versed in basic electronic
repair), etc...I now look at SF/LA/NY as being stuck in their own superficial
bubbles and I'm glad I left.

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whack
For the benefit of those who haven't read the actual article: _" New York will
never be Silicon Valley"_ is meant by the author as a compliment, not an
insult.

Relevant quotes:

 _Investors, founders and employees point to all the things that make New York
one-of-a-kind as the reason tech is growing in America’s biggest city: the
presence of other industries like finance, media and advertising, much more
gender and racial diversity and the metropolis’s centuries-old status as a
center of global commerce. New York provides a contrast to Silicon Valley,
which has been criticized for tunnel vision, being insular, out of touch with
the rest of the country and overly homogeneous–both company employees and the
people for whom they create products.

Instead of being dragged down or drowned out by New York’s well-established
mega-businesses, startups are feeding off them, hiring their disaffected
employees, building products to make them more efficient and partnering with
them in ways that help both sides.

“We wouldn't have been able to start our company with this scale anywhere
other than New York,’’ says Ryan Williams, the chief executive officer of
Cadre, a real estate investment startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Being
in the center of finance gives the firm access to top Wall Street talent and
helped it land $250 million to invest on behalf of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The proximity to major offices of many of the brands Zola sells through its
site was a major benefit to being in the city, she says. Having the
headquarters of top media and advertising companies a ten-minute subway ride
away went a long way too

“New York is a much better place for fostering women entrepreneurs and women
in tech,” says Samuels, who worked in the industry on both coasts. Both Ma and
Ferreira agree._

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walshemj
Good heavens yes old chap we don't want those greasy engineer types getting
the sort of bonus that partners at the vampire squid get

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lordleft
Thank god. Not to disparage SV, but one thing I love about this city is the
diversity of the subcultures here. I'd hate for it to be dominated by any one
industry.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
New York would want to compete, and it's big enough to do so. And I don't
blame them for escaping the "city/state/geographical category is the next
Silicon Valley" drivel that's been written previously because otherwise you
just end up being eclipsed by Silicon Valley in endless comparisons between
them.

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cletus
Oh how sad. How will we New Yorkers live without the lack of public
transportation, NIMBYism gone insane, the complete opposition to building more
than 1 housing unit on 15,000 square feet of land and no housing options for
lower and middle income workers within 2 hours of where they work?

~~~
tzakrajs
Right because MTA isn't an old broken down mess (I read too many articles
about this and I don't even live near NYC)

~~~
geofft
That's just because we have high expectations. Having lived in both the Bay
Area and NYC, in NYC we generally expect the MTA to work reliably, frequently,
and 24/7, because it _usually_ does. In the Bay Area I had no such
expectations: I knew there were trips I just couldn't make by transit in a
reasonable fashion, and other trips that I couldn't make quickly. So when the
transit systems failed to deliver, I wasn't actually disappointed.

For instance, my current commute from voice lessons in the Upper West Side to
my apartment in Brooklyn (about 9 miles) is one 30-minute train ride, with a
train arriving at least every 5 minutes, plus a 5-minute walk on each side.
I'm disappointed when that train doesn't go to Brooklyn on weekends because of
construction or something, and I need to make one transfer to another train
that also comes within about a minute of me getting to the transfer station.

My voice lessons in SF were in Diamond Heights, under 3 miles from my
apartment in the Mission. All the commute options involved a bus that comes
every half hour, and getting to that bus involved either a transfer from
another bus, or walking 15 minutes to take BART one stop. So I would just take
a Lyft or a ZipCar, and if the every-half-hour bus wasn't running that day, I
wouldn't even notice because I didn't consider it an option. (Sometimes for
the return trip I would walk >20 minutes downhill to Glen Park BART, but it's
too steep to be a reasonable commute uphill.)

And then I moved to Oakland and gave up on going to voice lessons entirely.

Both the MTA and the Bay Area transit systems have plenty of room for
improvement. The difference is that we think that improvement to the MTA is
politically realistic, that covering the city with good, reliable transit is
within the realm of possibility because we're so close to being there. That's
why we make more noise in NYC. In SF, it didn't feel like there was a point.

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mylons
in other news; oranges aren't apples. and oranges are good with that.

~~~
croon
Low hanging fruit, but shouldn't it be the apple being okay with that?

/Recent parent practicing dad humor

~~~
sbanach
Congratulations!

~~~
croon
Much appreciated! I've began training my replacement.

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somberi
Just to give a proportional representation - California is 2.5X of New York
State's economy (2.5trn vs 1trn) and around 17% of the 2.5trn is from Bay
Area. If you include greater NYC region (as opposed to just NYC and not NY
State), then the economy of just NYC-related economy 1.3 trillion (2012
number, so may be 1.5trn is a fair number to adjust for baselines), which is
3X of Bay Area economy.

There is a reason why Godzilla stamps Empire State Building out more often
than Golden Gate Bridge in the movies :)

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lkrubner
Maybe, but it is worth pointing out that some VC firms are fighting the good
fight to transform New York into a rival of Silicon Valley. I'd especially
praise Primary Ventures for their efforts:

"Long Live Silicon Alley: The Inaugural NYC Summit"

[http://www.primary.vc/blog/summit-17](http://www.primary.vc/blog/summit-17)

I was at one of their gatherings not long ago and they pointed out that New
York is the world capitol for domain-specific knowledge in at least a dozen
industries: publishing, law, medicine, fashion, art, education, finance, and
more. There is a potential there for a kind of success that will be different
than Silicon Valley's, but not necessarily inferior to Silicon Valley.

------
ThomPete
I have lived both places (SF in the dotcom period) and now live in New York.

I love SV for many things and there are many great people there, but at the
end of the day, New York is my city because its more human, honest, candid and
less tribal.

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mattbuilds
I grew up right outside of NYC and still live here, probably will never leave.
I only have one other friend in tech and I honestly like it that way. I think
you get a different perspective on things. I get to learn about a bunch of
different industries and see things in a way I probably wouldn't if all my
friends were in the same field.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
Likewise, I grew up in Scarsdale. Very few of my friends work withinin the
same industry. Excluding a few people in finance, I'm working through my group
of friends in my head and everyone else works in a different industry:
publishing, law, actuarial, fashion, art sales, advertising, education,
medicine, and insurance (just off the top of my head). What's really nice
about it is that we're all able to learn a bit about each industry. I don't
need a mile deep, but it's nice to learn a few feet wide.

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zombieprocesses
clickbait filler "news/journalism" like this just irritate me so much.

Firstly, who said we want to be silicon valley? Secondly, who are these two
journalists that gives them the authority to say what ny is good or not good
with? What the hell do they know about anything? Thirdly, they comparing a
major city to what amounts to a business district. Maybe if they compared
district ( garment, finance ) to silicon valley, there might be a point to
this article.

It's such a non-story turned into one just because they need to publish
rubbish everyday.

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bob_theslob646
Is it not amazing that both areas, cannot solve problems such as homelessness
and traffic/congestion.

Really makes you think why some people go into these fields.($$$, not all but
some)

It is ironic because with all the money they make, they cannot afford to live
in the cities that they work.([http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-
unaffordable-e...](http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-unaffordable-
even-for-engineers-2015-5\)\(https://therealdeal.com/2018/02/25/why-
increasing-numbers-of-new-yorkers-are-calling-it-quits-on-city-life/\))

If only the government could match private sector wages. I think a lot of
people would be way more interested in the public good then!

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senatorobama
Because there's available women in NYC.

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bobthechef
SV is rather provincial, as are Boston, etc, so it's a bit amusing that anyone
would presume that NYC, with all its flaws, would suffer from some kind of SV-
envy, that it somehow aspires to be one of those boorish enclaves. Certainly,
NYC is glad it has a tech sector that is growing, but it a bit difficult to
imagine a major city without a tech sector. The occupational diversity alone
makes it a microcosm. A tech monoculture inspires images of a 21st century
Lehigh Valley.

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lvspiff
NY and Chicago - you guys get to be our financial centers. You get to play
with the money that SV and the SV wannabes make. We already have Seattle,
Portland, LA, Vegas, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Austin, Louisville, Madison,
Indianapolis, Columbus, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Boston,
Raleigh, DC, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Miami, Provo, Baltimore, and Ann Arbor. Stop
trying to create another overpriced tech mecca.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't get who "we" is supposed to be in this statement. Who has Indianapolis
and SLC?

~~~
bleezy
The USA. He's saying the USA already has enough tech cities.

