I find the tech scene in NYC to be a lot more tolerable than other places. It seems like many of us here understand that we're small fish compared to, say, the sharks on Wall Street.
An interesting thing to note about tech in NYC is that it's not at all like tech in the west coast where it's tech for tech's sake. In NYC it's always in support of some other industry.
Yeah, unfortunately it puts you lower on the totem pole as a software engineer. This results in lower salaries in general for developers there compared to the bay.
Definitely gives off a different vibe.