Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anybody who asks this question hasn't lived in SV and fundamentally doesn't understand the unique mix of economic conditions that have resulted in what it is today. No city is even a close 2nd.

OP here, I grew up in Palo Alto and Went to JLS, Gunn High. I saw my parent's shitbox go from 600k to 2.5 million in real time.

Small world! I grew up in MP, moved away for school then returned for a 15 year career in venture capital. I’m looking at relocating my family to DC now, hence my presence here.

Silicon Valley operates on a “gold rush” mentality. Every year 10s of thousands of mostly young people move here because they have a chance to “strike it rich” that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world at this scale. I have a dozen acquaintances who moved here within the last 5 years essentially penniless and are today worth several hundred million dollars, some no doubt on their way to the billions. Stories like theirs keep hope alive in the minds of the masses. Where else does that exist? Nowhere. Seattle gained traction as a tax haven for early Facebook execs around 2009 and then other companies followed. Amazon provides a broad base of employment in Seattle but their stock isn’t a gold rush of the same magnitude.

People here work 24/7 with faux social lives that are really just professional networking events on steroids. Surreal and inhuman lives that wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else. Why do you think the homeless crisis will never be solved? Partly because nobody really treats this as a place to live any more. It’s just the largest mining camp in the history of the world.

There are other structural reasons why prices became elevated - proposition 13 is probably the most impactful, without which 80% of my neighbors would have sold and moved by now. There are also extreme limits on density. You could easily build 100k new condo units south of SF to SJ but municipalities prevent it (for now). By contrast, from what I’ve seen the DC area lives to build up.

I’m bullish on tech (and personally heavily invested in tech) so unlike others I won’t predict a tech crash or down turn. Unfortunately I think SV will become a victim of its own success and devour itself from the inside. Just in the past year I’ve noticed attitudes about raising a family here start to shift. It’s too ambitious, too cutthroat, too lacking in humanity. If you’ve been here awhile you likely know the family of a teen suicide. Families in my network have started to move elsewhere - north to Santa Rosa, east to Tahoe, Dallas, Wyoming, or in my case DC.

So I’m confident that the underlying conditions that have created SV are unlikely to occur in any other major tech hub, least of all in DC. But apart from the self interest of some real estate appreciation, trust me you wouldn’t really want them to.

I grew up in the Bay Area and have lived here for most of my adult life and consider this post to largely be a bunch of exaggerated nonsense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anybody who asks this question hasn't lived in SV and fundamentally doesn't understand the unique mix of economic conditions that have resulted in what it is today. No city is even a close 2nd.

OP here, I grew up in Palo Alto and Went to JLS, Gunn High. I saw my parent's shitbox go from 600k to 2.5 million in real time.

Small world! I grew up in MP, moved away for school then returned for a 15 year career in venture capital. I’m looking at relocating my family to DC now, hence my presence here.

Silicon Valley operates on a “gold rush” mentality. Every year 10s of thousands of mostly young people move here because they have a chance to “strike it rich” that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world at this scale. I have a dozen acquaintances who moved here within the last 5 years essentially penniless and are today worth several hundred million dollars, some no doubt on their way to the billions. Stories like theirs keep hope alive in the minds of the masses. Where else does that exist? Nowhere. Seattle gained traction as a tax haven for early Facebook execs around 2009 and then other companies followed. Amazon provides a broad base of employment in Seattle but their stock isn’t a gold rush of the same magnitude.

People here work 24/7 with faux social lives that are really just professional networking events on steroids. Surreal and inhuman lives that wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else. Why do you think the homeless crisis will never be solved? Partly because nobody really treats this as a place to live any more. It’s just the largest mining camp in the history of the world.

There are other structural reasons why prices became elevated - proposition 13 is probably the most impactful, without which 80% of my neighbors would have sold and moved by now. There are also extreme limits on density. You could easily build 100k new condo units south of SF to SJ but municipalities prevent it (for now). By contrast, from what I’ve seen the DC area lives to build up.

I’m bullish on tech (and personally heavily invested in tech) so unlike others I won’t predict a tech crash or down turn. Unfortunately I think SV will become a victim of its own success and devour itself from the inside. Just in the past year I’ve noticed attitudes about raising a family here start to shift. It’s too ambitious, too cutthroat, too lacking in humanity. If you’ve been here awhile you likely know the family of a teen suicide. Families in my network have started to move elsewhere - north to Santa Rosa, east to Tahoe, Dallas, Wyoming, or in my case DC.

So I’m confident that the underlying conditions that have created SV are unlikely to occur in any other major tech hub, least of all in DC. But apart from the self interest of some real estate appreciation, trust me you wouldn’t really want them to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:former fed who now works in SV at a tech company and DH is tech in SV as well. DC, due to the kissing ass of government, tends to attract risk averse people. SV is all about failing and failing fast. DH who is an entrepreneur hated the types of people he met in DC in the tech scene, saying even the private sector folks had a risk averseness about them that would not be successful in startups. I loved DC but at a general level he is right. there is a close mindedness and a base level of complacency in the DMV area that isn't here in the Bay Area.

The risk aversion is b/c much of DC are striver transplanted from poorer parts of country where if they fail fast they end up on the street penniless.

Bay Area is mostly UMC brogrammerss who have daddy’s safety net when they fail.

spoken like somebody who has never set foot in SV where most startups are led by 1st generation immigrants with very little safety net.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:former fed who now works in SV at a tech company and DH is tech in SV as well. DC, due to the kissing ass of government, tends to attract risk averse people. SV is all about failing and failing fast. DH who is an entrepreneur hated the types of people he met in DC in the tech scene, saying even the private sector folks had a risk averseness about them that would not be successful in startups. I loved DC but at a general level he is right. there is a close mindedness and a base level of complacency in the DMV area that isn't here in the Bay Area.

The risk aversion is b/c much of DC are striver transplanted from poorer parts of country where if they fail fast they end up on the street penniless.

Bay Area is mostly UMC brogrammerss who have daddy’s safety net when they fail.

Anonymous wrote:former fed who now works in SV at a tech company and DH is tech in SV as well. DC, due to the kissing ass of government, tends to attract risk averse people. SV is all about failing and failing fast. DH who is an entrepreneur hated the types of people he met in DC in the tech scene, saying even the private sector folks had a risk averseness about them that would not be successful in startups. I loved DC but at a general level he is right. there is a close mindedness and a base level of complacency in the DMV area that isn't here in the Bay Area.

Anonymous wrote:former fed who now works in SV at a tech company and DH is tech in SV as well. DC, due to the kissing ass of government, tends to attract risk averse people. SV is all about failing and failing fast. DH who is an entrepreneur hated the types of people he met in DC in the tech scene, saying even the private sector folks had a risk averseness about them that would not be successful in startups. I loved DC but at a general level he is right. there is a close mindedness and a base level of complacency in the DMV area that isn't here in the Bay Area.

Anonymous wrote:
Companies like Apple and Netflix do not have to be in the DC area. The need to have the capability to attract talent (who have choices and choose not to live in a swamp) exceeds the need to be located near feds.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[quote=Anonymous

If you are creating a product or service people actually want to buy or use, you won’t need to kiss a politicians ass.

All the big SV firms have representatives in greater DC, to kiss pols asses.

Not to the same extent as the beltway bandits.

The beltway bandits are serving the SV firms (and other firms around the country)

The point is that if kissing Pols asses means you don't have a product of service people want to use, then no one has such product or service.

The bigger point is that most products or services sold by companies in DC would not be bought by anyone other than the government, so that is why you need to kiss their ass.

To give you an example - the Obamacare website cost $1.7B to build, and it's crap. You wouldn't be able to get away with this shit if you're a normal company.