[DanielBMarkham]

I've worked all over the U.S., and oddly enough, am now only working in SV. Been here about 3 months.

Single? Young? Do it in a heartbeat. Get as much experience doing various things as you can. In the right spot, you can't beat the experience here. I'll also second what the others said about culture: go walking around downtown Mountain View or Palo Alto sometime and just listen to the chit-chat. Very cool stuff.

Older? Married with kids? Heck if I'd want to do it. Those same really cool 20-something masters-of-the-universe are probably also a major pain to have to deal with. Yeah, it'd be cool to bump into somebody in an elevator and start discussing NoSQL. No, it wouldn't be cool to go to some function like a PTA meeting or some meeting of the city council and have dozens of upper-income dweebs with little experience in conflict resolution.

I would also be very careful that you're not getting screwed over by a young startup that's going to crash and burn and take you with it -- or become one of the drones for one of the super huge companies. The sweet spot is between those two extremes. I imagine it would be extremely easy to wake up in two years and find you've lost a huge chunk of your life with little to show for it. Don't do that.