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Moved to Mountain View in 1987, then to SF about a year later, then to the Santa Cruz mountains about 10 years ago. My wife and I were in tech that whole time (me: SCO, Sun, SGI, Cobalt, briefly at Google, then BitMover). Neither of us enjoy going to Mountain View any more. It's the worst parts of a big city (crowded, traffic, parking, expensive housing) and the worst part of the suburbs. And there is a lot of snobbery about where you work and what you do, that's been there since the first day I got there (and I'm part of the problem, I was all snotty about the fact that I worked in Sun's kernel group; at the time that was the top of the heap, at least in my eyes). Personally, I'm happier up in the mountains. Can still get to SF in about 1h15m, get to the valley in about 30m but I live among redwoods, falcons, etc. |
If you work on kernel development, be as snooty as you want.
These days, those jobs that require real expertise and in-depth knowledge aren't nearly as heavily compensated as your run-of-the-mill Rails dev Stackoverflow pasting position.