One of the reasons SF grew as a tech hub was that large tech companies had so many employees living there and commuting to the valley because they preferred the urban lifestyle/environment to the suburbia of the Peninsula and South Bay. Eventually it became a competitive advantage to start up in SF (easier to hire young employees) or open a branch office there (retain employees). I work in SF in tech and many of my coworkers told me that exact story, because they were the ones living it.
Anecdotally, during remote work, I’ve seen a lot of younger people who aren’t on visas go live wherever/not move to SF for their jobs even if their team is in SF, while the established SF residents with houses and families stayed, as they did in the South Bay. The difference is that people who worked in the South Bay but hated it were never living there and instead in SF, so it hasn’t hollowed out as much as SF, which was more of a choice. Also from what I’ve seen, immigrants from India/China preferred to live in the South Bay anyway.
SF is great and I think it’s inevitable that it will see a resurgence. My guess is that young people at some point, being inherently contrarian, will eventually start rejecting remote work and want to live the lavish tech office lifestyle with other 20-something’s again. Likely the 2010s Google/Facebook experiences will be viewed with nostalgia and young people will try to recreate it in their new companies - it already almost doesn’t exist anymore since major company offices are sparsely attended and have had all the perks slowly cut back.
> will eventually start rejecting remote work and want to live the lavish tech office lifestyle with other 20-something’s again.
You assume a lavish tech office lifestyle will return in a world where the Bay doesn't have a monopoly on tech talent.
It remains to be seen whether or not tech workers can demand reality conform to their wishes. It also remains to be seen if revanchist Bay Area tech leadership could force the world to back-off and let them have the spoils again.
Great comment! Another trend from then 80s at least was to start out in SF and then move to Silicon Valley when you became a couple (the commute became a killer). In fact that was us (well SV->SF->SV). I learnt about this from a single friend who moved to Palo Alto and realized he couldn’t date any more — all the single guys were up in the city.
SF doesn’t have great kid infrastructure any more so I imagine this will continue, though spread more to the east bay as well as the peninsula is pretty crowded.
Anecdotally, during remote work, I’ve seen a lot of younger people who aren’t on visas go live wherever/not move to SF for their jobs even if their team is in SF, while the established SF residents with houses and families stayed, as they did in the South Bay. The difference is that people who worked in the South Bay but hated it were never living there and instead in SF, so it hasn’t hollowed out as much as SF, which was more of a choice. Also from what I’ve seen, immigrants from India/China preferred to live in the South Bay anyway.
SF is great and I think it’s inevitable that it will see a resurgence. My guess is that young people at some point, being inherently contrarian, will eventually start rejecting remote work and want to live the lavish tech office lifestyle with other 20-something’s again. Likely the 2010s Google/Facebook experiences will be viewed with nostalgia and young people will try to recreate it in their new companies - it already almost doesn’t exist anymore since major company offices are sparsely attended and have had all the perks slowly cut back.
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