Wondering how the tech jobs/startup ecosystem is in Los Angeles. From searching around, seems like only aerospace/defense startups and big tech. Hardly any startups. The Who's Hiring thread from this month only had 2 entries from LA.
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Personally (and contrary to the other comment about LA) it’s been the best place I have lived. It’s a polarizing city, understandably. But I think if you can make enough money and are ok with driving there’s endless amounts of things to do and passionate people to meet.
I’m someone who is currently struggling to find these people; what has worked for you? It often feels that everyone cool is trapped in their car, and we are destined to never cross paths.
1. Neighborhood matters a lot. This determines the kinds of events you’ll go to and people you see regularly. I explored a lot before I settled some place that felt like home. I live some place with good walkability and being able to walk to a coffee shop or park has been very important.
2. Hobbies. Outdoor fitness, DIY/underground music, and board games for me. It took some digging to find groups I liked (some of which I found out about online and some by asking people I met), but now I participate in at least one event/meetup pertaining to these hobbies every week (more if I can). Ex helping out at a DIY show, run clubs, hiking groups, board game meetups.
3. Having a dog. I’m outside regularly bumping into people. Having a dog often sparks a conversation and helped me to know my neighbors. You don’t really need a dog though any way you can open a conversation is good. Compliment someone’s shirt, ask a question, etc
So TL;DR walkable neighborhood that suits you, find something related to your hobbies and do it as much as you can, start conversations.
Good luck, it took me years before I got into a rhythm.
But how is the cost of living? or is that already factored in?
It's the first time the conference has been on the west coast in quite a while, and I'm hoping we can attract a bunch of Los Angeles area Pythonistas who didn't make the trek out to Pittsburgh or Salt Lake City or Cleveland.
If you are part of the LA Python-adjacent tech scene I encourage you to consider coming along! It's a genuinely great community-led conference, attracting over 2,000 attendees.
It would be really cool if we could attract enough entertainment industry people to get sessions on Python in film production, VFX, animation and other creative industries.
Startups in LA are interesting. Back in the day, there was a lot of Ad Tech / advent of big data. This is when Snapchat and Hulu were coming up. I’d go on Angellist and see who was hiring and who’d be down to meet.
Now, especially post covid, I feel sparks of excitement. I missed the crypto hype in LA so that was probably wild and weird. a16z opened an office in Santa Monica and do their speedrun accelerator. Focused on games and media it seems.
upfront hosted some cool cowork and mingle events too.
Two meetups I regularly go to is AI Tinkerers and MLOps. Generally it’s the same small crowd. I went to a Ruby meetup which was cool too.
Less of a young startup crowd. Maybe people got older and rich and retired early.
I really enjoyed my time there and would love to hear, what surprised you most about how LA has changed?
things still go viral - pop ups are very popular with the young crowd. owalla was giving out water bottles and the line was around the block and i didnt see the end of the line
The tech scene is not doing so well imo. people say gaming is cyclical but idk tbh. AI adoption in graphic design and coding is really going to squeeze an already stressed gaming labor pool. entertainment industry is much the same.
i cant name one young rising startup that was hot like snapchat. so that was disappointing when i was job hunting.
traffic is still bad. smog is less bad.
nooo
i wonder what other people think
But weather is incontestable, food culture exciting, if you have a creative itch to scratch you can bump into a major creative professional accidentally at a bar (like a TV animator or music recording producer/engineer who works for one of the major labels) and before you know it you have a pilot episode or album you’re ready to pitch. shrugs
LAX will get you anywhere in the world non-stop and is easier to make compared to JFK.
As far as the vibe goes, it's nothing like the bay when it comes to tech. LA is way more laid back and people are much less focused on tech. In the bay I constantly overheard people talking about tech or overheard people talking about VC/startups. Rarely ever in LA. The bay is really intense in that way.
I lived in Seattle too. As far as tech scene/startups obsession goes, it was Bay > Seattle >> LA.
With that said, there's a decent community. It's easy to find meetups, etc.
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A lot of people are responding with complaints or praise for life in general in LA. That wasn't part of your question so I'll just keep it brief; on the whole, I dislike living here and feel it is one of America's most mismanaged cities but cannot just pack up and leave for various social reasons.
I'm genuinely just curious what makes you think LA is uniquely mismanaged in a way that other tier-1 cities in America are not. I don't have too much experience with LA but am familiar enough.
LA is top 1-5 in US cities by GDP (and to be fair so are the others you mentioned except for Seattle), so I personally see it as a hugely negative mark on our local and national character to have large parts of it be dirty, choked to death by traffic, have insanely high rents, etc. I don't know if other cities have quite as many structural aberrations in their governance as LA despite seeing many of the same issues - I don't know whether it would relieve or horrify me to learn that they don't.
There are fewer tech jobs than LA, but most of the FAANGs have offices here. There are a lot more options for housing than LA, and a lot less traffic.
For instance, my ~5 bedroom house is worth around 2 million in a nice neighborhood and i'm a 10 minute drive from a huge Amazon office, a 10 minute drive from Blizzard HQ, and a 25 minute drive from a decent size Google office.
A similarly priced and sized house in Los Angeles would be a 80 minute commute to either Amazon, Google or Meta in Santa Monica.
But LA has high rent and public transportation isn't really usable.
People are mean.
I wouldn't suggest LA to anyone.
The city definitely has tech jobs, but you might have a job in the valley now, get laid off and have to drive to Culver City. Super commutes of 1 hour each way are common.
But it is not suitable for every personality type. If you struggle to make friends, you will struggle more in LA.
If you work in tech, you are likely of a certain social persuasion (though not necessarily).
In which case this advice holds. But you shouldn't frame it as an absolute. It is personality dependent.
It's just math.
Chicago, no need for a car, rent is 1600$ within walking distance of a metro station. A monthly metro pass is about 100$.
1700$.
In LA, 2700$ for an apartment. 500$ car payment, 300$ insurance, 200$ for gas. About 100$ a month on stuff like parking and basic maintenance.
3800$.
If you have an extra 2100$ a month to tell everyone you live in LA, that's great. But the next problem is most people in LA are struggling. It's complex, but this factors into the quality of people you meet.
Personally it's the difference between driving around a 30 year old Instagram model who has no real interest in you, but expects you to pay for stuff vs dating an amazing 30 year old with a solid career.
Outside of dating, in LA you have "friends" who will beg you for money and then resent when you help them out. This weird interiority complex develops.
I've lived in about 3 major metros for any real period of time. LA is by far the worst. Concerts are fun, the food is good, but it's just a really hard place to live.
Now 20 years ago, you still had 500,600$ apartments for working class people. It USED to be an affordable city. But that's gone now.
I miss that Los Angeles. I miss my 600$ Ktown apartment, 4$ tortas, 3$ bottles of Soju.
It was an amazing place once. Doesn't really matter if it's completely unaffordable now.
Literally billions of people exist outside of LA, and while LA does have a lot of cultural influence generally, you might be surprised how much of the world’s culture and creativity happens outside of it. At the very least NYC probably has a strong argument to make here, not to mention places like Hong Kong, Beijing, or Tokyo.
Back in Chicago when I switched jobs I basically just rode the metro for an extra 5 minutes.
If I really wanted to I could of gotten off at the same train station, went to the cafe I liked, and walked 10 minutes to my new office.
In LA you can easily have one job in Santa Monica or Venice and end up needing to switch to a job in the valley. Your commute can go from 20 minutes to 60 or 70 each way.
As is car ownership is a horrible burden( particularly in high traffic areas, living in a suburb/ slightly rural area and coasting to work could be nice). Driving is really dangerous and stressful too. I'd rather read comics on a nice train ride into the office.