What's the dark side of Silicon Valley?

Oh how I loved the ‘only in silicon valley’ answers! Complaining about types of entrepreneurs!

There’s all sorts of annoyances here. Let me share my opinion on the “dark side”:

The standard of living here is terrible.

So many examples, let me start with the apartment building I’m looking at from my office window. It charges around $3500 a month for a two bedroom apartment. These are “luxury” apartments intended for childless professionals. The apartments are wonderfully designed for separate living quarters, where the only time you might see your roommate is when you get your coffee. The apartment has no outside space, just a park across the street. It assigns a single parking spot per unit. that’s OK they claim they are one block from a trolly station.

Presumably half of the residents park in the street. The street suffers theft every week, including all sorts of vandalism. Crime in upper middle class areas is common. This puts the residents into panic mode with parking and forces angst ridden parking situations. All along the street are porsches, BMWs, and similar cars, including more common ones.

Now, think about this, you make $150,000 a year. You split the rent with someone paying close to 2000 a month, and you take turns parking in the street. You have no outdoor space.

Like a city. But it’s not a city. Indeed, you have no city amenities. No close by restaurants. No corner grocery stores. No arts, theater, absolutely nothing but sprawl and chain stores.

But you make $150,000 a year.

Will you work at least 60 hours a week? Possibly. Can you afford to raise children? Maybe. Like most around here, you’ll outsource raising your kids. You’ll outsource almost all pet services too. You can afford to pay others for loving what you love, how else could you show your love in the backwards place?

Taxes in CA are depressing. After that fat salary, you’ll have very little to show for it: an apartment, with a roommate, a nice BMW that occasionally gets broken into. No free time. No personal time.

It’s subtle, but an enormous difference when you move here from elsewhere. You will not see baseball diamonds, families on residential streets. You won’t smell jasmine or citrus blossoms like all over SoCal. You will not go to the beach (they made them into state parks with admission prices and then they will kick you out at sunset).

Your standard of living just plummeted though you doubled your salary.

Lots of my friends love it here; they live and breath code, tech, teslas and apple gear. They are very well off, but live in ordinary homes in suburban sprawl. Palo Alto goes for $1200 square foot.

You could move elsewhere and enjoy a far better standard of living but work remotely… a friend moved to Colorado and bought a palace for money that he laughed at: $600,000. He paid cash from his townhouse equity. Not stocks! Just equity from a silly little townhouse.

I have a horrible little townhouse in San Jose. 1100 square feet. Appraised at $820,000.

Elsewhere, things are expensive. But what do you get? It’s expensive in Tokyo, London, Paris, New York - but what do you get? Access to studios? Shows? Restaurants? Other countries?

Here, in Silicon Valley, you know what you get? A job.

Seriously, that’s the draw here. You get a job.

And you get to work for someone who professes to be progressive but makes many, many multiples of everyone else in the company. You work for that guy. And you outsource everything lovely in life so you can work for that guy. He goes mountain biking before work, you sit in traffic.

This place is a fraud, and quite honestly, the ostentatiousness, the self-importance, and the standard display of self-congragulation disgust me . I absolutely cannot wait to collect my small sum of loot and get the hell out.

You see this picture?

This is a picture I took at the Airbnb I stayed when attending a MEMS sensor conference in Santa Clara. The location was close to Intel, NVidia, Dell, Oracle, Apple, and all sorts of big famous valley companies.

Anyone want to guess what they are?

They are garden sheds that the landlord was leasing out to engineers who worked at the above. The housing there is SOOO expensive engineers with doctorates and masters are living in GARDEN SHEDS!

The landlord, a retired Vietnamese Chinese mechanical engineer told me the rents there are so high that these accommodations are all the interns and engineers at the beginning of their careers can afford.

The junk you see in the foreground are stuff the landlord was clearing out so he could put more garden sheds in. You can see from the lights, the sheds in his backyard are fully leased.

After seeing this, I finally understood why places like Google provided free breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their employees had no place to cook! LOL

Don’t even get me started on bringing a girlfriend home…probably not an issue with engineers but still…

The negative descriptive words that come to mind when I think of Silicon Valley are: arrogance, pretentious, greed, overcrowded, overvalued, and stressful. I have some positive words too, but this topic is centered on the negative. Here's a very personal take on the subject...

My wife and I grew up there and spent most of our adult lives in and around San Jose. Having worked in the tech industry in the late 90's early 00's, mostly for a great little start-up company, I had a lot of fun and fully embraced that "cool" Bay Area vibe. My wife worked for a few tech start-ups as well. I still consider myself to be an entrepreneur and still know many people with that same spirit who live there. We moved out to Denver for several years and have since moved to the Roseville/Sacramento area and visit the Bay Area often.

My advice would be; Don't get too caught up in the hype. The Bay Area/Silicon Valley can feel like the center of the universe at times for a tech entrepreneur. You'll find that many who live there believe that and you'll probably sense a bit of the arrogance we sensed. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by the best and brightest, and that living there meant that I had the best chance of being involved in some of the most exciting projects ever... the reality is that most projects and start-ups there fail and success is elusive. Don't get me wrong, the success stories are definitely great to read about and are inspirational to see and be a part of. But don't expect that to be the norm. You need to keep learning and improving your skills to keep up with the trends. And as others have pointed out, be prepared to compromise quite a bit due to the ridiculous housing prices and expenses that are cheaper elsewhere.

The high cost of living has many negative effects. You come to realize that family life takes a back seat to work life when living in Silicon Valley. Children tend to grow up in day cares, after school programs, and/or in some cases on their own while both parents work and endure long commutes, and it's pretty evident in the attitudes and personalities of the young people who live there. Parents simply can't afford to be involved in their children's lives because they're forced to work to make ends meet. Most areas that aren't considered ritzy or glamorous have a run down, unkept, overcrowded, and sometimes unfriendly feel to them. Most neighborhoods and communities have endured the wrath of rapid growth for decades and the lack of planning has had a significant negative effect on the overall appearance and feel of Silicon Valley. Turn over is pretty high in a lot of communities and that might play a role in why a lot of the neighborhoods don't have a friendly feel to them. In many ways the Bay Area has the look and feel of a boomtown that has been used up by the masses. It's one of the few places I know of where a great job and $400k buys you a home in a neighborhood that many outsiders would consider ghetto-looking.

I don't think we'll ever move back, even if we could afford to live in one of the few areas that we feel gives us close to what we have now on a single income. Sometimes I still miss the SV vibe, but I've found that the entrepreneurial spirit and drive comes mostly from within, not from where you live. I don't have some of the professional opportunities I would if we lived there, but I also benefit quite a bit by not living there, mainly from being able to support my family on a single income while my wife, who has dedicated herself to being a wonderful stay-at-home mom, takes care of our girls and shuttles them around to school and other activities daily - something the average family just can't do living in the Bay Area. It's a lifestyle choice that we've made and are quite happy with.

Quality of life means something different to everyone. Take a moment to define what it means to you, personally and professionally. Be prepared to compromise. And try to take advantage of all of the positive aspects of the Bay Area every chance you get. Otherwise you'll find that the sacrifices simply are not worth it.