Data point of one but my wife and I decided we were done and left earlier this year. Quit my FANG job that wouldn’t support the move, bought a house in a MCOL area and could not be happier.
I’ve even lost some pretty significant weight just getting back to living a non-workaholic lifestyle.
Life is short people. Keep an eye on what’s actually important to you.
I did the same and haven't looked back. I can take a walk without wandering through a sketchy bum colony. The streets aren't lined with RVs. My property tax is in the single-digit thousands of dollars.
I was able to get a concealed carry permit, but ironically, I only carry when I have to travel back to the Bay Area.
The discussion here regarding how fleeing SV workers is disrupting property markets in other cities in the US brings up an uncomfortable but, I think, unavoidable point: local housing policy has nation-wide consequences.
If SV and SF allowed for the construction of additional housing, there would not be a downstream housing crisis in Denver, Austin, etc. The policy decisions of a handful of city councils of the suburbs on the West coast has had a huge impact on these cities -- and has indirectly displaced residents, disrupted local economies, and pushed many people into homelessness.
Housing policy in major economic zones in the US is a national issue, and should be treated as such.
This doesn't even touch on the wider problem of income inequality itself.
If we're being completely honest, the average American would be much, much better off if SV had never produced a single unicorn.
How about those other cities build the housing that SF won’t? There nothing stopping them. And those cities could benefit from the new high income residents. How can “we should all be poorer” be a good solution to high housing prices? There’s always the supply side of the equation and people need to live somewhere.
It takes many months to develop new housing in the U.S. Even when you have local political support, there's a lot of custom manual work and so forth.
It's also very hard to find examples of long-term successful large-scale (town-scale) growth. So we can't just move substantial fractions of people from our largest cities to mid or small-sized cities in a matter of months or years (and get satisfactory results).
Undoubtedly NIMBY forces around the U.S. are partly to blame, but the Covid/WFH exodus is surely the more important factor at this point in time.
Yes, they should build more. But again, that's just pushing the core problem away from SF (one of the most notable cities in the US for over a century, with a history of economic booms and high migration) to what was until recently a large-ish college town known as a haven for slackers.
Having lived in one of those cities as a low-income resident, a medium-income resident, and now a high-income resident, I assure you that the high income residents do much less for these cities than any other group. And no, taxes do not make up for it.
Would you encourage your children to go into a homebuilding trade? Which is the kind of question I think about when I wonder who is supposed to build all the houses.
Local housing policy, and more importantly city planning, is just as bad if not worse in Austin than SV. I don't really see city councils on the West coast having any impact on Denver or Austin as the influx of people to Denver and Austin could (and probably does) come just as easily from any other location. Point being, don't let local government in Denver and Austin off the hook for their failure to adapt.
Yeah, Austin and Denver et al have also failed in their housing policy, for pretty much the same reasons as SV. No argument there. But it's hard to deny that SV's wealth explosion and exodus has not contributed to the problems in these cities.
Authoritarian regimes across the Pacific Ocean have consequences on American property demand too. So does migration across the southern border. In fact I think you would be hard pressed to name a thing that happens anywhere in the world that doesn’t downstream from it have an effect on the American property market.
Clearly the solution is for US to annex the Earth like we annexed the Moon and then nationalize housing policy. /s
Our local housing policy does suck, but this is not a constructive direction. You’re simply replacing one power structure with a different one in the hopes that maybe it’ll be better, when what you want to make are specific policy arguments.
Yes they do. But we -- that is, our nominally democratic government, a "power structure" which you have arbitrarily equated with a collection of private corporations -- have placed restrictions on immigration, and some light restrictions on foreign ownership of real estate itself, for precisely this reason.
Secondly, Canada, whose real estate markets have been even more seriously disrupted by authoritarian regimes across the Pacific Ocean, have already placed outright, albeit temporary, bans on citizens of those regimes from parking their capital in the domestic real estate market.
Your characterization of my argument is specious and straw-man-esque. You are assuming that globalization is a given, that borders are always porous, that neoliberalism is the only way of looking at the world. I am kindly inviting you to reconsider your point of view, in light of evidence that it has made housing more unaffordable for the many Americans, disrupted their livelihoods, and dissolved their communities.
Or you can keep making colorless jokes to yourself about the property markets on Mars, up to you.
Do it. We got probably 5x the amount of house than we could have gotten in the Bay Area and we don't have to worry about our car windows being broken. We now live close to nature and I'm in such better shape being able to trail run, mountain bike, and snowboard minutes away from our house.
Please don’t, unless you’re willing to confront your own contribution to the situation you’re fleeing.
Wherever you go, there you are.
As someone in Colorado watching the influx of Californians with a dread and frustration over the past 10 years, the majority of newcomers seem to vote and live exactly like they did in CA, creating the exact same problems in CO that they ran from CA to escape.
Watching from Spain, what do you mean "vote and live exactly like they did in CA"?
Here in Spain more and more northern europeans come. I guess many of them are going to settle here (I get lots of questions about taxes and dealing with the spanish state, candid souls), so they contribute to the housing problem but I don't really see what they might import here that can worsen the situation besides their purchasing power.
Also, being Sillicon Valley one of the most productive places on earth, why companies don't involve themselves in politics about housing and city planning?
If I was some top head in such companies I woudl definitely consider it, as it goes directly against my floating line. If I manage to convince mayors that copying the netherlands onto the land around my offices I wouldn't need to pay so much and my engineers would be happier anyways.
They are basically swimming in cash, so IDK, they are involved in politics anyway...
The truth is people vote the same everywhere, we see the same nimbyism in Texas for example for decades, its just now finally catching up with increasing population.
Acting like all the issues are due to recent laws is a easy lie to fall for.
> Please don’t, unless you’re willing to confront your own contribution to the situation you’re fleeing.
What do you mean? I've lived in Colorado and now live in California. Sure, it has serious problems but I'd say some of them are from population density. Millions of people living in small area causes issues. Housing prices? I'd want housing prices to go up if I owned. Taxes? That's a financial question, and the bay area offers world class comp in tech. Traffic? Also bad, but that's from attracting so many people. Crime and homelessness is a serious issue. But I don't think there are easy answers. I live in a safe area, and I would run into other political issues in different states.
That’s a lot of judgement to individuals without a lot of facts to back it up.
If California is broken, it’s not from the people that live there or leave because they can’t stand it the way it is. If another place becomes that way, it isn’t the people coming there that causes it (other than from the population shift).
Everything is crowded nowadays anyway, ant least in the cities. That’s an issue with there being more people in general.
This is a complaint with all forms of migration where someone seeks to escape their bad living conditions.
Generally those conditions are caused by the people who live in them - their culture and ways of thinking - even if they don't understand or can't acknowledge how.
Many people want to escape the consequences of their own beliefs, but don't want to give up the beliefs themselves.
Another example of, "You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic."
What people who never lived in California don’t realize is that there are a lot of transplants from elsewhere. California natives tend to stay. The transplants do not. Many of these transplants tend to move back to their home state.
Also many of them are not liberal, if that’s what you were hinting
Did you know Colorado actually receives more people from Texas than California? It doesn't really make sense, because California is 33% larger than Texas, but it's true.
So you really should be blaming Texans more than Californians, and if they are ruining Colorado like they did Texas, you should call them out on it.
I heard that exact same sentiment in the 1990s. I remember people in seattle complaining about people moving from california. (didn't check colorado at the time)
Seattle of the 80's and 90's comes to mind, when they hated having people move north from CA. They now have traffic jams in Seattle just like we do in SV.
I'm amazed at how many new Californians we must be creating every year. Those leaving the state are doing so in numbers able to impact the housing market and political situation in seemingly every state, city, and town across the country. All while still increasing our population every year.
So true. In France, with Covid, many of the IT crowd moved from Paris to cities like Bordeaux or Nantes, much nicer destinations.
They brought their votes with them. Those towns took a turn to the woke-left. Took barely a year to see it translate into higher crime, petty theft, etc. Now people are fleeing it again.
lol - that's like begging people to not cash a giant tax refund check to 'help the gov't'.
I get that it causes angst in the destination, but that is the last thing on anyone's mind when they're considering such a disruptive life change. They're moving because they're miserable right now. That it might make someone else slightly uncomfortable politically later?
And that's ignoring the whole 'no single raindrop causes the flood' issue. Beating up on any individual doesn't make a bit of difference. These changes are being driven by macro-economic shifts.
On a side note, what is also likely contributing? Nasty, nasty air pollution 1/4 to 1/2 of the year in the SF bay area due to all the fires.
Not a disagreement, but only to point out bay area isn't just SF. Go south a bit and there isn't really a worry of getting car windows broken either and also plenty close to nature.
I was working in tech in Bay Area and left to a mid-west 13 years ago. My friends called me crazy. Who is crazy now?!!
I was really burned out and though the tech scene was good in silicon valley(startups, good companies), it still felt my life was just monotonous. I had same tech friends, which were competing against each other. Talking about FAANG companies.
I took a pay cut when I moved away to my new place. I joined a small tech company and was happy. 9-5 job and skiing on the weekends. Taking dog to the walk everyday.
It felt like the vast majority of people I knew on IRC lived somewhere in the midwest, mostly Ohio. Honestly things didn't turn out so well for a lot of those people. Glad to hear it worked out for ya!
I’m a 30-something transplant that happily decided to stay in San Francisco, but I have a lot of empathy and understanding for those who decided to leave.
The thing that had the biggest impact on various quality of life issues (and why I stayed) was moving from
the Mission to a quieter and safer SF neighborhood. I bike everywhere, don’t have a car, and can walk to work and several beautiful parks, including one that opened this year.
If I had kids, don’t think it would have been possible at all to stay.
I left during COVID to be closer to family. I don't miss the high cost of living or the crowding, but I definitely miss the climate and access to nature. I've gained a bunch of weight now that I drive everywhere instead of walk. Just another anecdote to go with the rest in this thread.
It's interesting since as a SDE in India/Bangalore, I would absolutely love to work in California. All the reasons citied in the article applies to Bangalore as well?
For example similarities include, cost of living / rent in Bangalore is high but it's also the city with most tech jobs. The public transport infra is weak and there is an acute shortage of Uber cabs and yet it still is the most fun city for the youth to be in.
I guess what I am saying is that the grass is always greener on the other side. There will always be a tradeoff to make.
> as a SDE in India/Bangalore, I would absolutely love to work in California
As someone who spent all his childhood in Bangalore before migrating to the USA & specifically California, let me give you some perspective. No SDE wants to work in a Shimoga or Davangere. They want to work in Bangalore. Similarly, no SDE wants to work in a Concord or Martinez or what have you. There are thousands of perfectly good cities in California, but the SDEs all want to work in Silicon Valley. I remember during the early days of YC, I wrote to a founder saying I'd like to work with him. So he invites me. I go to see the company. Its just a 2 bedroom house in San Francisco! They've gotten rid of the furniture, put tables & chairs & laptops. So I tell him, look, I have a 2 bedroom house in San Ramon. We can just operate out of that. He says, I too have a 2 bedroom house in San Ramon! So I say, why are you working out of San Francisco ? Because that's Silicon Valley, you see! So 2 people who live 5 minutes walking distance from each other, both in San Ramon, each have 2 bedroom houses with enough space to spare, no cost, have to commute 1 whole hour, all the way to San Francisco every morning, to work in an expensive rented 2-bedroom house, because Silicon Valley. Now if that's not ridiculous, I don't know what is.
In the case of Bangalore, one could argue there is a huge advantage to commuting from say Hebbal to Electronics City, because there is a gigantic 4 million square feet Infosys campus over there. But if you have a collection of 1000s of startups, and each of them is just a 2-bedroom house or some small office building, the same can very well exist in Danville or Pleasanton or Walnut Creek or Clayton or Dublin or Antioch or .... I've stayed in all those places and there's plenty of cheap office space & 2-bedrom houses. But no. All the action must happen in Silicon Valley. Because.
In that sense I really welcome all this disruption. You don't have to go to Colorado or Seattle or whatever...just go 20 miles N/S/E/W...that itself would be a huge deal. Forget cost cutting, Cutting down on the pollution due to commute traffic would be a very significant positive contributor to the environment.
It would be a giant culture shock for an American to live in India, but I was in Bangalore for a while auditing some vendors there, and I have to say I would be very happy to work at any one of those places, they were like Google campuses and I enjoyed sitting in their gardens doing work in between audit meetings. Their work ethic was also very hardcore, so they worked a bit harder than I would be willing to do, but they were certainly as professional and their companies and facilities were as nice as anything in America.
Readit News
I’ve even lost some pretty significant weight just getting back to living a non-workaholic lifestyle.
Life is short people. Keep an eye on what’s actually important to you.
I was able to get a concealed carry permit, but ironically, I only carry when I have to travel back to the Bay Area.
Always when I think about how short life is, in the cited context, I remember this essay from PG. Which I found great:
http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
Just a guess, but seems likely in context.
Deleted Comment
If SV and SF allowed for the construction of additional housing, there would not be a downstream housing crisis in Denver, Austin, etc. The policy decisions of a handful of city councils of the suburbs on the West coast has had a huge impact on these cities -- and has indirectly displaced residents, disrupted local economies, and pushed many people into homelessness.
Housing policy in major economic zones in the US is a national issue, and should be treated as such.
This doesn't even touch on the wider problem of income inequality itself.
If we're being completely honest, the average American would be much, much better off if SV had never produced a single unicorn.
It's also very hard to find examples of long-term successful large-scale (town-scale) growth. So we can't just move substantial fractions of people from our largest cities to mid or small-sized cities in a matter of months or years (and get satisfactory results).
Undoubtedly NIMBY forces around the U.S. are partly to blame, but the Covid/WFH exodus is surely the more important factor at this point in time.
Having lived in one of those cities as a low-income resident, a medium-income resident, and now a high-income resident, I assure you that the high income residents do much less for these cities than any other group. And no, taxes do not make up for it.
> the average American would be much, much better off if SV had never produced a single unicorn.
Is this an envy thing? The average American isn't really affected by SV's housing prices at all.
Clearly the solution is for US to annex the Earth like we annexed the Moon and then nationalize housing policy. /s
Our local housing policy does suck, but this is not a constructive direction. You’re simply replacing one power structure with a different one in the hopes that maybe it’ll be better, when what you want to make are specific policy arguments.
Secondly, Canada, whose real estate markets have been even more seriously disrupted by authoritarian regimes across the Pacific Ocean, have already placed outright, albeit temporary, bans on citizens of those regimes from parking their capital in the domestic real estate market.
Your characterization of my argument is specious and straw-man-esque. You are assuming that globalization is a given, that borders are always porous, that neoliberalism is the only way of looking at the world. I am kindly inviting you to reconsider your point of view, in light of evidence that it has made housing more unaffordable for the many Americans, disrupted their livelihoods, and dissolved their communities.
Or you can keep making colorless jokes to yourself about the property markets on Mars, up to you.
Wherever you go, there you are.
As someone in Colorado watching the influx of Californians with a dread and frustration over the past 10 years, the majority of newcomers seem to vote and live exactly like they did in CA, creating the exact same problems in CO that they ran from CA to escape.
Here in Spain more and more northern europeans come. I guess many of them are going to settle here (I get lots of questions about taxes and dealing with the spanish state, candid souls), so they contribute to the housing problem but I don't really see what they might import here that can worsen the situation besides their purchasing power.
Also, being Sillicon Valley one of the most productive places on earth, why companies don't involve themselves in politics about housing and city planning?
If I was some top head in such companies I woudl definitely consider it, as it goes directly against my floating line. If I manage to convince mayors that copying the netherlands onto the land around my offices I wouldn't need to pay so much and my engineers would be happier anyways.
They are basically swimming in cash, so IDK, they are involved in politics anyway...
Acting like all the issues are due to recent laws is a easy lie to fall for.
What do you mean? I've lived in Colorado and now live in California. Sure, it has serious problems but I'd say some of them are from population density. Millions of people living in small area causes issues. Housing prices? I'd want housing prices to go up if I owned. Taxes? That's a financial question, and the bay area offers world class comp in tech. Traffic? Also bad, but that's from attracting so many people. Crime and homelessness is a serious issue. But I don't think there are easy answers. I live in a safe area, and I would run into other political issues in different states.
If California is broken, it’s not from the people that live there or leave because they can’t stand it the way it is. If another place becomes that way, it isn’t the people coming there that causes it (other than from the population shift).
Everything is crowded nowadays anyway, ant least in the cities. That’s an issue with there being more people in general.
Generally those conditions are caused by the people who live in them - their culture and ways of thinking - even if they don't understand or can't acknowledge how.
Many people want to escape the consequences of their own beliefs, but don't want to give up the beliefs themselves.
Another example of, "You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic."
Also many of them are not liberal, if that’s what you were hinting
same thing happened to Austin and is starting to happen in Dallas
So you really should be blaming Texans more than Californians, and if they are ruining Colorado like they did Texas, you should call them out on it.
https://stacker.com/colorado/states-sending-most-people-colo...
Truly incredible.
They brought their votes with them. Those towns took a turn to the woke-left. Took barely a year to see it translate into higher crime, petty theft, etc. Now people are fleeing it again.
I get that it causes angst in the destination, but that is the last thing on anyone's mind when they're considering such a disruptive life change. They're moving because they're miserable right now. That it might make someone else slightly uncomfortable politically later?
And that's ignoring the whole 'no single raindrop causes the flood' issue. Beating up on any individual doesn't make a bit of difference. These changes are being driven by macro-economic shifts.
On a side note, what is also likely contributing? Nasty, nasty air pollution 1/4 to 1/2 of the year in the SF bay area due to all the fires.
I was really burned out and though the tech scene was good in silicon valley(startups, good companies), it still felt my life was just monotonous. I had same tech friends, which were competing against each other. Talking about FAANG companies.
I took a pay cut when I moved away to my new place. I joined a small tech company and was happy. 9-5 job and skiing on the weekends. Taking dog to the walk everyday.
I feel happy.
The thing that had the biggest impact on various quality of life issues (and why I stayed) was moving from the Mission to a quieter and safer SF neighborhood. I bike everywhere, don’t have a car, and can walk to work and several beautiful parks, including one that opened this year.
If I had kids, don’t think it would have been possible at all to stay.
For example similarities include, cost of living / rent in Bangalore is high but it's also the city with most tech jobs. The public transport infra is weak and there is an acute shortage of Uber cabs and yet it still is the most fun city for the youth to be in.
I guess what I am saying is that the grass is always greener on the other side. There will always be a tradeoff to make.
As someone who spent all his childhood in Bangalore before migrating to the USA & specifically California, let me give you some perspective. No SDE wants to work in a Shimoga or Davangere. They want to work in Bangalore. Similarly, no SDE wants to work in a Concord or Martinez or what have you. There are thousands of perfectly good cities in California, but the SDEs all want to work in Silicon Valley. I remember during the early days of YC, I wrote to a founder saying I'd like to work with him. So he invites me. I go to see the company. Its just a 2 bedroom house in San Francisco! They've gotten rid of the furniture, put tables & chairs & laptops. So I tell him, look, I have a 2 bedroom house in San Ramon. We can just operate out of that. He says, I too have a 2 bedroom house in San Ramon! So I say, why are you working out of San Francisco ? Because that's Silicon Valley, you see! So 2 people who live 5 minutes walking distance from each other, both in San Ramon, each have 2 bedroom houses with enough space to spare, no cost, have to commute 1 whole hour, all the way to San Francisco every morning, to work in an expensive rented 2-bedroom house, because Silicon Valley. Now if that's not ridiculous, I don't know what is.
In the case of Bangalore, one could argue there is a huge advantage to commuting from say Hebbal to Electronics City, because there is a gigantic 4 million square feet Infosys campus over there. But if you have a collection of 1000s of startups, and each of them is just a 2-bedroom house or some small office building, the same can very well exist in Danville or Pleasanton or Walnut Creek or Clayton or Dublin or Antioch or .... I've stayed in all those places and there's plenty of cheap office space & 2-bedrom houses. But no. All the action must happen in Silicon Valley. Because.
In that sense I really welcome all this disruption. You don't have to go to Colorado or Seattle or whatever...just go 20 miles N/S/E/W...that itself would be a huge deal. Forget cost cutting, Cutting down on the pollution due to commute traffic would be a very significant positive contributor to the environment.
I think you are underestimating the commute to Electronic city. It must be life sucking, same as the SV commute, probably more.
This definitely does not apply to the Valley. SF you could make an argument for at least.