[eldavido]

I live in SF.

There is a very clear trend of companies starting to look elsewhere for talent, such that in the long term, I really doubt the tradeoffs of SF will be worth it. The cost of living here is just terrible and I think companies are starting to accept that the government and people just really don't want tech to be here, at all.

Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:

New Relic - serious tech company - note how much elsewhere: https://newrelic.com/about/careers

Carbon Robotics - Guadalajara - http://www.carbon.ai/careers/

Front page of the SF Chronicle: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/For-San-Francis... "Politics, economics and real estate could make jobs boom elsewhere"

Absurd cafeteria ban - showcases the general attitude of the city government toward tech, something between a never-ending money fountain to pillage, and a nuisance: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed-em...

Gecko Robotics, Pittsburgh: https://www.geckorobotics.com/

Others offhand: Boston Dynamics, wherever Amazon puts HQ2 (I'm guessing Atlanta, DC, or Pittsburg), Sendgrid and Gusto moving people to Boulder, numerous great options in Seattle (Zillow, Microsoft, Amazon), tons of great companies in NYC.

I really believe you have to skate to where the puck is going with this stuff, not where it is now. In my view, the future is clearly "the rise of the rest". Salaries have gotten so out of control, the only companies who can afford to be here at the mega-tech giants (monopolies) who can afford the pay numbers people are throwing around. It's not sustainable and I think there will be major growth elsewhere in the next decade, especially as venture funding starts to fan out, traditional industries start to figure out software more (e.g. food processing in Chicago), and people in their 30s with 10+ years experience want to start families and have to take care of parents.

[dmode]

Your examples are very few. May be to balance you can post some other companies, like Uber: https://www.uber.com/careers/list/?team=engineering

Here is twitter, with 95 openings in SF: https://careers.twitter.com/content/careers-twitter/en/jobs-...

That is close to 400 openings for Software engineers in SF among just 2 companies. it will take a lot of New Relics to compensate for that kind of demand. And I haven't even linked to Google, FB, Apple (each of them hire thousands of engineers in SF), Lyft, Airbnb, Salesforce etc. I feel like the advice in HN is more of what people wish it would be, but doesn't reflect. The original article is spot on and is remarkably good career advice for anyone who is starting out. Go West.

[eldavido]

All I'm saying is that there's a choice.

You have to ask, why will companies pay $180K or more in salary when equivalently good people (and I really do mean this) are available at half the cost elsewhere?

How is this sustainable long-term?

And to what extent is the behavior of young firms a bellwether for the future? I really wouldn't bet against this trend.

[Altimor]

Yes I've noticed this trend as well. Other examples of companies moving from the Bay Area include Expensify (Pittsburgh) and Indinero (Pittsburgh too I think, and the Philippines).

I think that's tragic, as there are strong network effects in ecosystems like Silicon Valley — everyone would benefit from all the talent and capital being in the same place! Studies show that cities get more productive, creative and ecological as they get larger.

That said, even with that trend going on, I still think Silicon Valley will remain by far the #1 tech ecosystem in the US 20 years from now. It just has too strong of a tail wind at this point (the network effects I mentioned above). People have been predicting its demise for about 30 years now. Maybe this time is different, but so far it's always done well for itself.