
Why I’m Leaving San Francisco: Meta study - ryanckulp
https://www.ryanckulp.com/leaving-san-francisco-meta-study/
======
computator
I wouldn't trust keyword analysis or word frequency to figure out why people
are leaving. And unless AI has gotten a lot smarter than I'm aware of, I'd say
that the only way to get a meaningful result is to actually read each blog
post and then write a short 5-10 word summary. Sure, it's subjective but you'd
get a lot more nuance like, "His girlfriend lives in New York", "Misses skiing
and now has money to do just that", "Closer to elderly parents who need care",
"New startup in Texas that's perfect fit", "Can't renew U.S. visa", "Moving to
attend grad school".

The author has pared the list down to 137 blog posts, so even a fast reader
would take a day to read all of them. But probably he already spent at least a
day collecting that data, doing the analysis, creating the graphics, etc., so
it's not crazy to suggest doing it manually. Alternatively, the list could be
further cut down to 20-40 postings, which could be read in a few hours. That
would result in a way more interesting (human) analysis.

EDIT: For each blog post, it would be interesting to note the sentiment of
whether the person is being _pushed_ out of San Francisco (can't afford the
city, lost job, can't renew visa, etc.) or whether they are being _pulled_ to
a new location (perfect new job, girlfriend/boyfriend in different location,
etc.).

~~~
dragonwriter
> I wouldn't trust keyword analysis or word frequency to figure out why people
> are leaving

Even if I trusted automated analysis of blog posts to tell why the authors of
the posts are leaving, I wouldn't trust a non-systematic collection of 100
blog posts to reflect people who write blog posts about leaving, nor would I
trust people who write blog posts about leaving to represent people who leave.

------
generaljelly
I also find it curious that safety and sanitation aren't referenced. I by no
means have all the answers; however, I am sure my main reason for leaving San
Francisco will be along the lines of these things. I've had traumatic
experiences living in this city and I am 6 ft male that lifts weights often
(I'm just trying to imply that some people most likely get harassed even more
than I). I wish I had more of a capacity to help this city rather than leave.

~~~
lubujackson
The surprising thing to me is seeing how bad many other cities have gotten
with tent cities and homelessness. I remember (circa 2007) when there were no
tents on SF streets, even under the freeway. But then I see how bad other
cities have gotten: Portland, LA, Tucson, Vancouver... this is not an isolated
issue and each city is managing homelessness/affordability in different ways.
Although SF and CA in general have drawn themselves into a corner through
decades of bad policy.

------
thorwasdfasdf
We left in 2015 because: 1) The extremely high cost of living which makes
everyone poor. only 25% of the housing there is market rate and thus
available. Our salaries were pretty high working in tech, but not high enough
to afford a nice place to live in SF.

2) Homelessness

3) The politics.

4) Poop (although much worse now). It's not so much the poop itself that
bothers me. It's the attitude of the politicians in SF. we just really
disliked the way things were being handled and are currently being handled in
SF. They are "progressive" in title only. there's really no progress in living
standard at all. if anything, things are getting worse and worse and worse,
based on the things I've read and the stories I'm hearing.

5) we didn't want to live in a city that might not even be able to provide
schooling for our child.

6) Day care costs would have been astronomical (by now it's up to 3000 per
month, i've heard)

~~~
nostrademons
> They are "progressive" in title only. there's really no progress in living
> standard at all.

"Progressive" usually refers to progress in equality & social justice.
There've been many instances in American history where a small group has made
significant progress at the expense of some larger outside group: initial
settlement, slavery, Manifest Destiny, industrialization, redlining, the
software boom. These are usually not labeled as progressive. The in-group
usually labels them with terms like "destiny", "building the future",
"progress" ( _not_ "progressive"), "technology", and "rationalization", while
the out-group labels them as "colonialism", "imperialism", "conquest", and
"corporate greed".

The other major eras of progressivism in the U.S. (1900-1929 and the Civil
Rights era from 1965-1980) also did not feature rising living standards for
the dominant social group. The former involved a plateau in the rate of
technological development & industrialization while increasing unionization
started sharing those fruits more broadly, while the latter involved an
extension of basic civil rights to non-whites, at the same time that
stagflation was taking root and the wages of the white working class started
to plateau.

Keep that in mind: when you hear "progressive" it might not be progress _for
you_.

~~~
Nuzzerino
> Keep that in mind: when you hear "progressive" it might not be progress for
> you.

You're missing the point. While it's debatable whether the theory of
progressivism is working out for the homelessness, I hope we can agree that
the execution has been horrible. Progressives have controlled the local
government there for some time now, and since they've done so, things have
grown worse. The situation hasn't been much better in Seattle, Chicago, or
Detroit. Progressives like to point fingers to blame others for the problems,
but there's a very real possibility that, yes, they really are in actuality
_regressive_ for everyone, homeless included.

------
baby
My main reasons:

* number of homeless people (they are everywhere)

* safety in general

* poor public transport

* cost of renting and buying

* density (it is quite an empty city and is designed for cars)

* a bit too cold

~~~
PascLeRasc
Where do you go to though? I'm trying to leave Pittsburgh because it's so car-
centric and the weather is awful. I'm not sure there's a city in the U.S.
where you can bike commute every day of the year and be comfortable. San
Francisco seems like the best available.

~~~
nradov
Some people bike commute every day in Minneapolis. Comfort is a matter of
proper clothing.

------
1290cc
The homeless and trash situation in the bay area has exploded in the last 2
years. Big sections of 880 are strewn with trash like a dump site and there
are tent cities populating the underpasses in Berkeley, West/East Oakland. The
cities governments seem paralyzed between bickering homeless advocacy groups,
CalTrans and tax payers furious at the decline of so many public areas.

Time is running out for some of the regions politicians. With hundreds of
millions spent, it feels like there is almost zero impact.

~~~
vuln
Try hundreds of BILLIONS spent.

[https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/13/californias-213-billio...](https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/13/californias-213-billion-
budget-focuses-health-home/)

~~~
1290cc
I'm probably looking in the wrong place but this was the only statement I
could find on California's annual homeless budget in the linked article...
"California's homeless and housing crises are linked, and the budget will
spend $2.4 billion addressing those concerns."

This is roughly 1% of the annual operating budget.

Not much as $60k/person would cover just 40,000 people. Homeless advocacy/Non-
profits would take a large percentage of this for administration so the per
person dollar spend is far lower.

------
smilekzs
> i was surprised at how seldom “junior” was written, e.g. “jr developer.”
> either employees stick around awhile before calling it quits on San
> Francisco, or they lie about their job title.

Because "Junior Software Engineer" is usually written as just "Software
Engineer", "Software Engineer I", ...?

~~~
ryanckulp
i wrote this with “just graduated from X bootcamp and will be starting a new
job as a jr developer” type commentary in mind.

totally valid criticism tho

~~~
davidcsally
I would love to read a meta article on posts like: `so blessed with
${numOffers}, it was so hard to narrow down, i can't wait to start working at
${company}`

~~~
ryanckulp
good idea. has anyone ever moved to SF without either 0 prospects OR 13 offers
from Google et al?

------
mrnobody_67
Better to just look at 1-way Uhaul truck rental trends --

[https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19966/U-Haul-
Migration-...](https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19966/U-Haul-Migration-
Trends-Top-25-Growth-Cities-Of-2019/)

------
duaoebg
What happened to capital letters?

~~~
dyingkneepad
have you seen how much a capital letter costs in the bay area these days??

~~~
_bxg1
But I thought they had tons of capital flowing in!

~~~
asah
But you have to buy them in 3-packs, e.g. TLA.

QED

------
fumar
It would be interesting to see the inverse, "Why I am moving to SF" analysis.

~~~
ryanckulp
after hitting publish i acknowledged another opp: “goodbye {{ other city }}”
posts. meta meta.

perhaps as many people leave nyc, for example, but only the SF posts get
shared

------
mistersquid
> sadly i failed to write my own retrospective when i left in 2016 after a
> year of working in venture capital, then a portfolio startup, and then
> founding my own company.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but 1 year to do any one of these things,
let alone all three, doesn't really seem like much time at all.

------
0h139
One factor that wasn't mentioned here (probably because people don't really
mention it publicly) that I've anecdotally heard of from a number of people in
tech who've made the SF->NYC move is the better gender and career diversity
there. For men this can equate to a better dating lifestyle, and just in
general some want to be surrounded by people besides tech bros.

Regarding politics, I wonder if another way to interpret this is people who
find San Francisco too liberal (or unsupportive of Trump) and want to move
somewhere more representative of how a majority of the country (however you
define that) thinks.

~~~
Redoubts
> I've anecdotally heard of from a number of people in tech who've made the
> SF->NYC move is the better gender and career diversity there. For men this
> can equate to a better dating lifestyle, and just in general some want to be
> surrounded by people besides tech bros.

This is absolutely valid and it's sad to see this greyed out. SF dating is a
shitshow from many perspectives.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_SF dating is a shitshow from many perspectives._

Dating in SF is… interesting, especially if you're trying to do so within the
confines of the tech community. Take a look at r/SFr4r (yikes). The tech
community out here is also pretty damn small. Looking on HN, facebook, or
reddit I'll still run into posts from folks I've gone out with or know
professionally.

From attending devops days in Manhattan a couple years ago I'd say that the
NYC tech community certainly seems more diverse than what I'm used to out
here.

------
gacklesmom
I'm a little disappointed that you're still convinced it's a "safety" thing.

People say the same thing about Seattle, and virtually without exception
they're people who have simply never lived in a major city before, and wildly
misunderstand what counts as "crime."

Like the guy upthread who wanted to move because he'd experienced _two_ car
prowls.

~~~
shados
Normalizing crime is a safety issue in itself, including property crime (the
difference between a violent and a non-violent crime is often just if you
happened to be around or not...)

Also I take exception at the "never lived in a major city before". I've lived
in "major cities" for most of my life, and it wouldn't take too many car
prowls to make me leave. It just never happened.

Ironically I've only been to Seattle once over a few days and on my second day
got attacked by an homeless person with mental health issues. Fortunately for
me, they also had the physical strength of your average toddler so I left the
situation without a scratch and wondering wtf just happened.

~~~
gacklesmom
Cities have property crime. The only way around it is to sequester yourself in
a gated community or similar.

I have a fun anecdote too -- the last time I was out in a rural area I got
knocked over in a Walmart by two rednecks who were fighting. I've elected not
to judge the entire area based on that one experience.

~~~
shados
They do have property crimes. They do in varying amount based on how accepted
it is and how much the city and it's citizens fight it. You realistically
can't bring it down to zero, but there is a big gap between, let say, Seattle
vs Montreal to pick 2 extremes.

Even NYC isn't that bad depending on where you live, but it can swing straight
back if people just sit back and accept it.

------
ddebernardy
> thus i’m curious how conservatives or Trump have anything to do with one’s
> departure.

Oh, that one's simple enough if you assume they're part of the reason why
you'd leave the country. And while we're on that topic, the same two reasons
might also get factored into deciding to _not_ come to SF or any other US city
-- alongside guns, overpriced education, and overpriced healthcare.

------
downerending
When I ran the numbers about a decade ago, the BA was _significantly_ more
expensive than NY, at least if you need a house and a good school for your
kids. SF proper is inconceivable, of course.

------
Apocryphon
I'm quite disappointed that tech-bro.com redirects to some sort of Chinese
linkspam site. Or perhaps that's apt.

~~~
ryanckulp
debated making this a real link but not trying to single anyone out

------
ninth_ant
> thus i’m curious how conservatives or Trump have anything to do with one’s
> departure.

Perhaps, because one can leave the country when you leave SF? I did.

------
_bxg1
For anyone else who finds the lack of capitalization distracting, run the
following in your JS console to fix most of the sentences and "I"s

    
    
      document.querySelectorAll(`p`).forEach(el => {
        el.textContent = el.textContent.replace(/[\s]i[\s]/g, ' I ');
        el.textContent = el.textContent.split(/\.[\s]+/g)
          .filter(sent => !!sent)
          .map(sent => sent[0].toUpperCase() + sent.substr(1))
          .join('. ');
      })
    

Edit: Tweaked to filter out empty strings because it died about 80% of the way
down the page

~~~
ryanckulp
amazing. maybe i’ll turn this into a toggle on all my posts

~~~
kyralis
Please do. The lack of capitalization made me close the tab after about two
sentences; this just doesn't make it past my "worth reading" filter. Sure,
maybe it's good, but I have heuristics like this for a reason, and I'm quite
happy to ignore work that simply can't be bother with basic English language
norms.

~~~
205guy
To be honest, the author's capitalization didn't bother me, and I didn't
notice it until halfway through. Even his comments here are readable to me.

However, your heuristic worked because the content of the article was crap. Or
to be more charitable: over-promised with a good idea and under-delivered with
incompetent data-analysis, mangled conclusions, and ax-grinding (reiterating
an opinion that he admits isn't supported by his data).

Sadly, it gives us another data point: a person who doesn't follow "fake
rules" and totally uses "totes" in comments didn't write a good article. not a
good look

------
datashow
This is an interesting analysis. It's kind of social science research. I wish
the author had some training in the area.

A simple way to improve the trustworthy of the analysis is having another
person working with you to develop the categories, and then independently code
the posts, and then resolve the differences through discussion.

------
oso2k
This ought to have been a “Show HN:” post.

