[nhashem]

I've lived in Los Angeles in 2004, and I liked this article a lot. But I think there's another aspect that I think the OP overlooked:

The dominant industry here will always be Hollywood, where the price of failure can be literally devastating. If your startup fails in the Bay Area, it's not too hard to become a line engineer at another company. If your hedge fund fails in NYC, it's not too hard to get another job at another fund, PE firm, or commercial bank. In some cases, these "failures" are looked at as badges of honor, and likely gave you a lot of hands-on experience you can directly apply to your next job.

But if you fail in Hollywood, you're looking at however many years lost of your life, when you were making no appreciable money as a bartender or barista, with likely no applicable skills to any other industry. I found it amusing the OP described LA rent as affordable -- which by NYC or SF prices, it definitely is! -- yet LA also has the worst income/rent ratio of any city in the US, by far[0]. This is not due to rent being too high, but due to income being too low, because everyone here is broke while they're trying to write screenplays and go on auditions.

It's really hard to live here without having friends involved in the entertainment industry, so in other words, it's really hard not to see this up close. And even if your friends work on the production or post-production side, it's not much better. At least you have a steady salary, but you're probably also working for a huge megacorp studio that literally embodies every single Office Space cliche. Or you're working for a production or post-production vendor that has to jump through ridiculous hoops and work ridiculous hours to get business from said studios. And while that steady salary is nice, it's still not nearly enough if you want to ever actually do own property some day.

So, I wonder how much of that also tempers the goals and dreams for LA startup entrepreneurs. I know it's something I think about often.

[0] http://www.zillow.com/research/rent-affordability-2013q4-668...

[cbsmith]

I dunnoh. I've actually found the entertainment industry has treated their tech employees pretty poorly, and I've been able to make rent by working for actual tech companies. Seems to be an easier way to pay the bills in LA.

[jonnathanson]

True; it's pretty much impossible to succeed in business in LA without engaging with Hollywood in some fashion or another. (Unless you're in real estate, I suppose.) Even the startups in LA regularly meet with, and receive funding from, celebrities, big talent agencies, and media companies.

That said, I don't think there's a failure stigma attached to startup life in LA the way there is to acting or writing. If you're pushing 35 as an actor and you haven't caught a big break, you're seen as damaged goods -- and you've got a resume with 10+ years of food service on it. Not a fantastic place to end up. But if you tried and failed at a startup or two, and you have marketable skills? Very different story. Fox, Disney, etc., will probably hire you. So will other startups. So will Activision or various other game companies, if you have the stomach for that lifestyle.

To your point, though, life at those big companies isn't much like life at Google or Facebook. That's because they aren't tech companies, and tech is a side business for them. In some companies, and in some divisions, life can downright suck. But some of those companies are making bigger commitments to tech, and life as an engineer at Disney (depending on the department) can be pretty solid and well compensated. But if doing a few years at a BigCo while you figure out your next move is "failure," it's a much softer and kinder failure than that which awaits Hollywood hopefuls who never quite make it.

On a semi-related note: the key to Hollywood is relationships. It's like DC in that regard. People who come to town with preexisting relationships have a significant advantage. People who don't will need to forge them somehow. While that's not trivial, it's not impossible.

As the tech scene grows and matures, so too will access to fellow tech workers, financiers, etc. One of the reasons I'm optimistic about LA is that its tech scene is starting to become self-sufficient, i.e., almost ready to become an independent ecosystem and industry, apart from entertainment or media. It'll always be to the LA tech scene's advantage to maintain ties there. But sooner or later, you'll be able to live and enjoy LA as an engineer without having to play the Hollywood game.

[niels_olson]

Isn't SpaceX in LA? What about JPL, etc? Aerospace seems big there.

[jonnathanson]

Good point.

Aerospace in LA used to be a lot bigger than it is now. A lot of companies migrated out or downsized over the years, though to your point, some of the more exciting ones are still around. I'd certainly consider it a real possibility for anyone interested.

It's kind of a different world, though. You don't generally see a lot of crossover between aerospace and the startup scene in LA. That's not to say it can't happen, that it doesn't happen, or that more cross-pollination shouldn't happen. Just that a lot of the skills required in aerospace are domain-specialized. Great space to be in, however, if you want to specialize. A good friend of mine spent most of his career at JPL, worked on navigational software for the Mars rover missions, etc. He was coding at the assembly level for most of that time. Which is super cool for people who are interested, and perhaps less so for people who aren't. If one has inclinations in that area, it's a fascinating place to be.

[mturmon]

I work at JPL. We do see crossovers to start ups, but as mentioned, not many, and typically in selected domains like machine learning, robotics, and computer vision or image processing, all of which are represented at JPL. An early googler (@lisper on HN) used to work next to me at JPL, and so did a very early Amazonian. I also know early hires for SpaceX and D-Wave.

I would echo the comments nearby that the LA tech scene is not all Hollywood. Sometimes Hollywood has a hard time seeing outside itself. To me, the universities have a significant presence in the tech scene here (Caltech, USC, ISI, UCLA, UCI).

[jonnathanson]

That's well said, and I certainly appreciate your perspective!

I didn't mean to imply that the LA tech scene is "all Hollywood," but rather, that Hollywood and the LA tech scene overlap in many ways, and that Hollywood has a way of being near-unavoidable in the upper echelons of the LA business community. That's not to say it's totally unavoidable -- and for that matter, not to say it needs to be avoided -- but it's obviously very influential in the city. A lot of that influence stems from the fact that Hollywood is a major financial hub for new investment, be it in tech or in other domains. As I mentioned, that influence will wane in direct proportion to the degree that the startup scene in LA grows and develops its own financial ecosystem. (That's starting to happen, although, as the article mentions, it's by no means complete just yet.)

I didn't mean for my comment to be too focused on Hollywood, but in going back and rereading it, I can see how I gave that impression. In retrospect, I should have phrased it differently.

[mturmon]

No worries, I did not actually criticize your post, which I found to be accurate.

[michaelmike]

They are. And so is Boeing, Raytheon, EA, and Blizzard if you're near Irvine.

LA is incredibly diverse, despite people harping on about Hollywood. You can work in this town and never even care "the industry" is here. It becomes background noise. This is also why LA will never be defined by "Silicon Beach." People on the east side don't go west. (For good reason, I might add. Your life will be one hellish commute after another)

[akbar501]

> The dominant industry here will always be Hollywood

Hollywood is the #6 industry in LA by output. #1 is real estate.

In terms of employment, the government is the largest employer, followed by universities (UCLA/USC), medical (Cedars-Sinai/Kaiser) and then Fox (the #7 employer).

[henrikschroder]

Yes, but Hollywood is the fuel for those other industries, not the other way around.

[waterlesscloud]

Which has zero to do with what the dominant industry is.

[ekianjo]

> In terms of employment, the government is the largest employer

Really ? Is that the only state like that, and why is it so in California?

[rdl]

Pretty normal for government to be the largest single employer, outside smaller towns or cities with one huge employer.

[wavefunction]

Texas is another state that derives a great deal of its employment from the Federal government. Lots of military bases in both states.