[zemo]

young people, please don't take the advice in this article seriously.

> My objective in this post is to convince you that you need to move to SF.

There are many ways to have an enjoyable life. Anyone telling you that you have to make all of the choices that they made to have an enjoyable life is worth ignoring.

[Altimor]

I mean, arguably people make their choices because they assume they're the best given their conditions. It's not like it was totally random. Isn't it worth sharing the advice with people in similar conditions?

[buboard]

> people make their choices because they assume they're the best

worth sharing their 100% confirmation-biased advice?

[zemo]

> sharing the advice with people in similar conditions

this piece doesn't do that, since it doesn't analyse what the author's conditions are prior to moving to SF. The reader is not armed with any useful means of deciding whether the author's conditions match their own.

It's also full of sweeping generalizations presented as fact.

> If you’re in tech, you need to move to San Francisco.

that's a sweeping generalization presented as fact, without a hint of irony, suggesting that if you're in tech and you -don't- move to SF ... then, what? You've chosen poorly. You'll regret it. You'll be sad. You'll hate your life.

Hilariously, the author cites Amazon as one of the companies that are in SF, but Amazon is from Seattle.

It says "the coolest companies" under the assumption that the reader shares the author's values. It says this so plainly that it suggests that the author is not even aware that other people could have different values from their own.

> All the coolest companies ... Facebook, Salesforce, Uber

I don't think Uber is a cool company. I think Uber is an evil company that is actively doing harm to society. There is no amount of money that Uber could pay me to work there, because I think that they're unethical. Salesforce ... cool? From my perspective, Salesforce is one of the least cool things that humanity has ever produced.

> A pattern I’ve noticed is that newcomers here tend to fall in love with the city at first sight.

yeah I hate SF, and only go there begrudgingly for work. I would never elect to move there. I know many people in the industry that feel similarly.

but of everything here, this is what I find the most damaging:

> 6 years later, as I predicted, none of them have come, and their roots have gotten deeper. They built companies or careers, took mortgages, got married…

the suggestion here is that people who decided to live a whole life have somehow chosen incorrectly. I would be shocked by the arrogance, but the arrogance of tech industry zealots has long since ceased to be shocking.

[akhilcacharya]

Nit - Amazon has a bunch of offices in the Bay, including Lab126.

[d1zzy]

I agree, it feels like it's written by someone that has very little experience (professionally and in life in general). One thing experience gives you is perspective. And I actually like living and working in the SF Bay Area.