Choosing New York over San Francisco

http://kellysutton.tumblr.com/post/901431677/choosing-new-york-over-san-francisco

by kellysutton • 16 years ago

128 114 16 years ago

kellysutton.tumblr.com

mkelly• 16 years ago

Well said. The point that Wall Street != New York is particularly important here, w.r.t Antonio's post. I've only been here a year, but I know New York is big, and it is not homogeneous. I don't think Antonio ever realized that.

Also, kudos to blip.tv. I had a chance to meet a few of the blip kids a few months ago and you guys were really cool.

biggitybones2• 16 years ago

Seconded. I rarely interact with those types, and I work for a major consulting company in the city. There are multiple ways to avoid that crowd, starting with staying out of Murray Hill.

The thing I love about New York is the inherent challenge. You're among some of the most competitive people in the world who love nothing more than to squash your idea. And if you manage to convince those people or rise from their negativity, you know you're onto something.

I view it in many ways as its own little market economy with (close to) perfect competition among commodities. If something facing fierce competition (like restaurants, for example) can hold its own, you know there's some quality behind it.

davidw• 16 years ago

> The thing I love about New York is the inherent challenge. You're among some of the most competitive people in the world who love nothing more than to squash your idea. And if you manage to convince those people or rise from their negativity, you know you're onto something.

So you're saying that if you have the ability to make it there, the probability of making it in other locations is high?

oziumjinx• 16 years ago

i live in murray hill and love it. Close to grand central, union sq, madison sq park, great selection of restaurants (not trying to compare to downtown or even some ues areas), and it doesnt hurt that I work 4 blocks away from my apt.

Plenty of cheesy bars that are sure to bring in the 'i just graduated and trying to break into PR' crowds of girls.

Whats not to love?

pvg2• 16 years ago

It isn't but at the same time, Mountain View != San Francisco any more than Secaucus, NJ == New York. The whole thing boils down to a couple of guys who don't know what they're talking about blogging past each other. Which is their inalienable right, just not very interesting.

sethg• 16 years ago

I have even heard that Manhattan != New York, although my relatives on the Upper West Side treat Brooklyn as a distant and inaccessible planet.

cageface• 16 years ago

Another common gripe about California that I'll echo here: there's no weather! It may sound masochistic but I miss the seasons, the snow, wearing a scarf, sheltering inside with a cold nose and hands with something warm. The passing of the seasons gives life a constant pulse and direction. The eternal summers of CA get to be disorienting after a while.

pjhyett• 16 years ago

I find the ability to drive and experience seasons, like going to Tahoe during winter, is far more agreeable than being forced into them.

I spent 20 years in Chicago with its freezing winters and hot and humid summers and San Francisco's mild climate is a dream.

risotto3• 16 years ago

Hear hear.

I do suspect no seasons makes some of the LA natives a bit wacky. It's good character building to deal with shitty weather for a while.

But CA has all the advantages here. The day-to-day weather is consistent and mild, and there is easy access to whatever nature you desire for a change. Mountains for skiing, the ocean for swimming, surfing or boating, forests and deserts for hiking.

I was stuck in Michigan weather for 20 years too. Literally stuck in the winter. Having options is much nicer than not having options.

cynicalkane2• 16 years ago

Well, to each his own. I'm from Oakland, CA and I am fine with Chicago weather. It can get uncomfortable, but I'll take that as a trade-off for my near-downtown apartment in one of America's greatest cities at half the cost of a comparable place in NY or SF. The summers are actually better--Oakland will get these horrible 90-100 degree heat waves--and the problem of winter is easily solved by adding more layers.

gruseom• 16 years ago

  San Francisco is fine
  You sure get lots of sun
  But I'm used to four seasons
  California's got but one

http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/bob_dylan/california-lyri...

Which shows how little time he actually spent in SF, of course. Mark Twain's famous line about the coldest winter he ever spent being a summer in San Francisco is a lot closer to the truth. Unfortunately, Twain never actually said that. The internet, destroyer of illusions. :(

reneherse• 16 years ago

With respect to Bob Dylan, the meteorological charm of the Bay Area (and SF in particular) is not in its seasons, but in the often dramatic changes between its microclimates. It's a much different phenomenon than the broad, homogenous and slowly cycling climate of the East Coast.

starkfist2• 16 years ago

You can wear a scarf all summer long in San Francisco.

prodigal_erik2• 16 years ago

I would have said this was a joke, except that I actually saw someone on Market wearing a scarf this afternoon.

endtime2• 16 years ago

That may be true of LA, but the Bay Area has seasons - two of them. Summer and Rainy.

lotusleaf1987• 16 years ago

Only if you live in Daly City.

ktsmith• 16 years ago

California is an absolutely humongous state and it most certainly experiences all of the seasons. San Francisco and the surrounding areas are a moderate climate, southern CA is certainly warm most of the year. Northern CA and Eastern CA experience all four seasons and the central valley is a bit of a mix depending on how far north you are. Lake Tahoe for example is a just a three hour drive (roughly) from the Bay area and will go from 80-90 degree days in the summer to 0 degree days with six feet of snow on the ground in the winter with typical spring and fall weather also.

char• 16 years ago

California has seasons! There's Fog Season, Tomato Season, Banana Slug Season, Dry Season...

Kidding aside, I really miss East Coast seasons, too. Sure I can go to Tahoe if I want snow, but there's nothing like being bundled up and walking around NYC at night after a light dusting of snow... before it turns to gross brown slush.

jim_h• 16 years ago

When it's really hot in NYC, it's really bad. This summer has had lots of >90f humid days and there are still many more hot days to go until Autumn. Except for the hot NYC summers, I do enjoy the seasons.

capedape2• 16 years ago

The title is talking about SF. There are seasons within neighborhoods of SF proper.

Dnewz2• 16 years ago

Is san francisco ruby or python?

seanroth• 16 years ago

python :)

Dnewz2• 16 years ago

Darn...then i have to move to ny. ;)

api3• 16 years ago

I don't know, but Boston is C++. Its mixture of hacker culture, hyper-IQ academia, and classical puritan social values is sort of like implementing closures with template metaprogramming and special #ifdefs everywhere for compiler backward compatibility.

It's puritan social values plus academic liberalism plus nerds. It is backward compatible but not strictly a superset.

Comparing cities to programming languages thread GO!

zackattack• 16 years ago

Do you think Boston is the best city for nerds? I'm looking for a genuinely pro-intellectual climate.

michael_h• 16 years ago

"My city is better than yours!"

"No, it isn't!"

It's weird how opinions work, isn't it? I don't like either place - where does that leave me?

risotto3• 16 years ago

Hopefully it leaves you in the city you live in, content with your life and work and surroundings, just like the rest of us.

ardit33• 16 years ago

I think one major argument that he didn't mention is that NYC beats SF hands down in the 'getting laid' department.

If you are young and your idea of having a good time is going out, partying until 4am, and getting laid often, then you should stay in NYC.

If you a super hipster, social outcast and/or into weird stuff, then come to SF. Your friends are already here.

risotto3• 16 years ago

It's shocking to me how few women there are in SF. The east coast is crawling with good looking, single young women. Most of them are really nice normal women with family oriented goals.

Then NYC is full of wild girls that like to dress up, go out and have fun. LA is great in this regard too.

Sure there are plenty of women in SF, but a good share of them are alt, hipster, vegan, etc. Nice enough still, but then the concentration of fairly well off guys really messes up the dating pool. Every time I go to a concert, it's mostly dudes and what women are there are literally held onto by a man.

Then there are no no party girls anywhere, outside of a couple neighborhoods.

SF still is really fun, just a lot tougher to get laid.

ww520• 16 years ago

There are plenty of men in SF if that suits you.

pkchen• 16 years ago

Lots of hot, young girls in NYC ... but if you're running a startup, goooood luck. Tell them you work at a hedge fund instead, then maybe you'll get laid.

the_pretender• 16 years ago

There's a reason why San Jose is considered Man Jose.

geebee• 16 years ago

I actually had a similar experience. Spent most of my life in SF but lived for about 6 months in Manhattan. It was far, far easier to meet women. In fact, a guy can even be a bit of a wallflower and still meet women in Manhattan, because they will take the initiative. Funny, up to that point, I thought SF was a pretty good place to meet women, because my only point of comparison was San Diego, which is a pretty rough dating scene for men. I actually still think SF is ok, because it has a greater concentration of jobs that appeal to women, as opposed to the valley. But it's no manhattan (I suspect that nowhere else in the world really compares). You know, this is actually one of the benefits of being in a city where tech isn't the main industry. New York is a far bigger center than SF for fashion, publishing, advertising, and so forth - fields that attract more women than men.

Ixiaus2• 16 years ago

San Diego isn't that rough; it's only rough if you aren't in the "scene". That said, if it isn't your thing, then I could see why it wouldn't work out - Las Vegas was rough for me because my personality didn't fit in with the "scene" there.

wilschroter• 16 years ago

Having lived on the east coast, midwest, and west coast, I would say the resources are certainly different at a business level (capital, talent, etc) although you can certainly make do wherever you go.

However, anyone who thinks there are hot girls in SF has never left SF.

moultano• 16 years ago

In this regard, Chicago trumps all. Chicago is to New York, as New York is to SF. Normalize this graph for population and you'll see what I mean: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/where_are_all_the...

SilianRail3• 16 years ago

As a Chicago native and a current Manhattan resident I'll have to respectively disagree. The amount of single women in Manhattan is staggering, noticeable and quite frankly of higher quality. For the record - I still love Midwest women.

sabat6• 16 years ago

Please. Chicago has no culture, no vibe, no personality. People there are, by and large, spending their adulthoods trying to overcome their religious upbringing. The weather sucks, the business climate is mainly stuck in the 1930s. There's no There there. What's good about it, again?

newmediaclay• 16 years ago

http://whytherearenogirls.blogspot.com/. Enough said.

chaostheory3• 16 years ago

The female to male ratio is an awesome point for living in NY, but if you're looking at it from the point of a good place to hack and build a startup - it's not really relevant. When you think about it, chasing tail takes time and energy that will distract your focus on your startup.

I'm from the east coast too. Been there, done that.

acgourley• 16 years ago

To be fair, the point is that you'll spend less energy doing so. And I don't think temptation or whatnot is a mitigating factor, I'd say that's geography agnostic.

psyklic• 16 years ago

I still say: if you're in a big city, the only person to blame about not meeting women is yourself. Be creative. Show girls that you're interesting and like to have fun. For fun I took an acting class in LA, another city of men. It was a small class with a 3:1 ratio -- 3 girls per guy -- and several of the girls were models. If that's not your thing, try an aerobics class at your gym. Idk, put yourself out there in situations where you see the same girls over time AND get to show your real self. Be real with people and they will like you.

billpaetzke• 16 years ago

If you are into health & fitness, try Bikram Yoga. It's the kind where you're in extreme heat. And there's also some extremely fit/attractive women there. Google for the closest one in your area.

FYI: I have found a great mix of people there; so, it's not feminine. Actually, the founder is an Indian man. Also, it's a little expensive, but you get what you pay for.

marcusbooster• 16 years ago

I've lived in a number of cities and surprisingly the Internet looks the same in all of them.

gaustin• 16 years ago

I agree.

The internet is the same here in Helena, MT as it is in any other city or town on the planet. Sure, the connection speeds leave a bit to be desired and there's little startup community. But there are exceedingly few places that have a quality of life to match it, especially if you are into trail running and mountain biking.

Maybe it'll be a bit harder to startup here. Maybe I'll end up moving if I create a startup with legs, or after I completely trash my body running ultras.

I've made my choice. I hope everyone else does too.

flyosity• 16 years ago

You should also post this on Reddit to maximize the upvote potential of this one witty statement.

cb33• 16 years ago

Palo Alto is "socially dead"?

jonknee• 16 years ago

> Given the lifestyle in the City, products are much closer to the pavement and are a solution to a real-world problem from Day 1. Not some social network plaything.

Humorous considering it's hosted by Tumblr, a social plaything based out of NYC. Foursquare is another that comes into mind as a questionably "real-world problem" solver social network plaything that came out of NYC.

prodigal_erik2• 16 years ago

Real-world problems? I get that a lot of software is just toys, but isn't NYC the home of economy-jamming fictional assets which only exist so a permanent overclass of full time traders have something to make more side bets on?

lr• 16 years ago

I agree with the (title of the) post very much, but one major point I would like to make is: Mountain View != San Francisco! I find it very misleading when people talk about San Francisco (usually in a negative light) and what they are really talking about are the suburbs of SF. Please stop doing that. That would be like saying NYC is boring because you are actually talking about Yonkers.

jbooth• 16 years ago

Yeah, but 80% of the tech employment is down there. So you either have a horrific commute or get to live in the suburbs.

That alone seals it for me, I'm staying in NYC. Although maybe I'd get more work done if my immediate environment bored me to tears.

papa• 16 years ago

Well it is possible to work for a tech company and stay in SF. You just need to work with a more restrictive set of job requirements. I got tired of doing the long commute in 2003 and decided to only look at companies within the city limits. It took a year to find something I really liked, but it was life-changing to be able to work and live in the same place and avoid the 50-mile one-way commute.

And, of course, you can start and operate your company out of SF (which is what I eventually did as well).

wooster5• 16 years ago

Not every time, but much of the time, I try to talk about what I do with a New Yorker (most East Coasters, actually), they start by bringing a lot of stop energy[0]. They'll say something like "Why are you doing that when there's already X?"[1], "That'll never work because of Y"[2], "Why did you quit your job at Z?", "Why don't you go work at ABC Investments, Hedge Funds, and Worldwide Arbitrage, Inc?"[3], etc.

It's frustrating and tiring to have to run through a huge body of what should be background knowledge just to have a conversation with someone about what I'm doing.

In the Bay Area, I generally don't have to deal with:

- Huge amounts of stop energy.

- Myopic views about which industries/products/companies/places[4] matter.

- Support of entrenched monopolies or ideas.

- Excessive amounts of negativism.

For example, when the iPhone came out, people in Silicon Valley were really excited. Meanwhile, talking to people in New York, it was almost a non-event; all I heard from them was why it would never matter because the Blackberry was so freaking awesome.

[0] http://www.userland.com/whatIsStopEnergy

[1] Why are you going to work for Apple? Nobody uses Macs and Microsoft is a much bigger tech company.

[2] Nobody here uses iPhones, you'd better get yourself a Blackberry!

[3] The future is bundling mortgage securities!

[4] If you can't find it in Manhattan, it can't be found! Best city in the world!

api3• 16 years ago

[0] is awesome, thanks. I encounter a lot of stop energy, and unfortunately sometimes it works on me. I need to just ignore it.

haseman2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure a little stop energy is such a bad thing. I'd say take their views with some salt...but Silicon Valley tends to be an echo-chamber. What's important in the valley isn't always important everywhere else. Unless your business/venture/idea is only targeted at people in the Bay Area, it pays to keep a little attention elsewhere.

sabat6• 16 years ago

I think the iPhone alone proves that wrong.

wooster5• 16 years ago

Sure, but I and most of my friends and colleagues spend all day every day thinking about and working on things which could be described as "the future". The things I think are important are often things I think are going to be important 3 or more years down the road, and that's why I'm working on them. That potential may not be realized, but I can derive absolutely no value from talking about them with someone who refuses to look beyond the here and now.

starkfist2• 16 years ago

For example, when the iPhone came out, ... in New York, it was almost a non-event;

Really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iSE0bBgUsQ

wooster5• 16 years ago

Yes, really. At that point the NY tech scene still considered iPhones to be toys.

jreposa• 16 years ago

Having lived in the north east my entire life, I completely agree. Although, I built up a resistance to it after a while. It has definitely hurt some relationships in the past.

But, can this attitude be said for lots of cities?

brown9-2• 16 years ago

Do you really find that the types of responses you get can be stereotyped by the person's location?

I just have a hard time believing that qualities like this can be chalked up to location and certain parts of the country, but perhaps I'm naive (and I have no experience living on the west coast).

wooster5• 16 years ago

Yes. It's a generalization, so there are always exceptions, but in general east coasters are much less accepting of things and ideas outside the norm than are west coasters.

kwamenum86• 16 years ago

You should have good responses to questions loaded with "stop energy" anyways.

wooster5• 16 years ago

It makes for extremely tedious conversation. These aren't investors or customers I'm talking to.

mildweed• 16 years ago

If you want an affordable, quality place full of capable, motivated people, not to mention the headquarters of the Kauffman Foundation... Kansas City is the place.

jakejohnson• 16 years ago

I second this, KC is a great city for startups and very affordable. Lots of motivated people at Startup Weekend and other events... many Ruby and PHP devs, not enough design talent. UMKC is pushing entrepreneurship through their E&I institute and student venture incubators.

Ixiaus2• 16 years ago

I like this rebuttal, a lot. I will say, having lived in California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Kentucky (not in that order) has made me realize this: culture counts for a lot, the internet is prolific, and calling any large American city a "technological backwater" is a farce.

A lot of people = a diversity of ideas = culture = innovation. New York has a lot of people and a lot of culture, quite a bit of innovation has come out of that city; California (as a whole, not just the Valley, I live in SD right now) has a lot of people and a lot of culture. The same can be said for Atlanta, Dallas, etc...

I will note this difference, though: much of California's culture embraces the leading edge more than it's east coast counterparts - computers and the internet is the leading edge; the internet is an agent of social reform and change, technology (computers) is the vessel through which widespread social reticulation is delivered. Therefore, I do not think New York is a technological backwater; but I do think the people in California/Portland/Seattle can be more progressive and this is why the west coast is carrying the torch.

Small disclaimer: I've been to New York but I haven't lived there, my conclusion is derived much more from intuition than actual experience.

gunmetal• 16 years ago

Palo Alto is not in San Francisco. Look at a map. Comparing New York City to Palo Alto is like comparing San Francisco to Burlingame.

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

What about Boston in this whole discussion?

techiferous• 16 years ago

We're too busy coding and working on our startups to comment. ;)

commanda• 16 years ago

"Given the lifestyle in the City, products are much closer to the pavement and are a solution to a real-world problem from Day 1."

This makes no sense. How does NYC's "lifestyle" create products that are any closer to "the pavement" than SF's does? Maybe Kelly should illustrate his point by choosing some NYC companies and comparing their products with SF products, or the products of startups from anywhere else for that matter?

elbrodeur• 16 years ago

This rebuttal is hilarious.

Kelly's TL:DR summary at the end should have been:

• NYC is more fun! And interesting! I'm 23. • I work at a big company, but startups have happened here at least once. • What do I know? I'm only 23.

The original article was articulate if a bit bombastic. The most salient points, which Kelly failed to address, were in my mind:

• The Bay Area has a culture and history of tech innovation • The Bay Area has thousands of VCs and venture money • The Bay Area has top engineering schools • The Bay Area has tons (metric!) more startups, entrepreneurs, hackers, coders, etc.

The most telling sentence in Kelly's post is: "The social component of a real city with museums, clubs, venues, pubs, bars and barcades is important."

A "real city"! Wow. By Kelly's estimation there must be at most only 2 or 3 real cities on the entire planet.

derekc• 16 years ago

Why the * does this matter? Start sh* anywhere.

wangwei• 16 years ago

If you are trying to do a life style start up, New York is probably a good place. (i don't have anything against life style business). Most of the examples you gave,including the startup you work for are life style business. So sure they would be more practical and making money from day 1. But you're trying to do anything more ambitious, silicon vally is still the place to go.

sdh• 16 years ago

The title says "San Francisco" but the article only mentions "Mountain View, Cupertino or Palo Alto" ... ???

What kind of comparison is this?

sabat6• 16 years ago

It shows us that the poster didn't understand where he lived. That's OK; there are enough of us here, don't you think?

kp212• 16 years ago

What about vendors for Wall Street? Anyone know where I could find vendors to Wall Street that are still essentially tech companies? I figure that market is huge in New York and might be a good alternative to the tradition IT in an IB job.

apinstein• 16 years ago

+1 from a guy that did 2 startups in NYC over 3 years as well. My sentiments exactly.

They are different environments with pros and cons, but I preferred the social scene in NYC to SF by far.

sabat6• 16 years ago

Compared to New York, it’s boring. I have trouble even thinking about living in an apartment in Mountain View, Cupertino or Palo Alto. Those places are socially dead.

This post suffers from the presumption that everyone wants the same thing from a city. So SF (really, the Bay Area) was not for you. It's for a lot of us.

Not all of us want to suffer awful winters and unbearable summers. Some of us love natural beauty -- and not just the girls. And many of us like a different kind of social scene than NYC offers.

Sure, NYC is exciting. I've been there, and not as a tourist. But it's not for me. (Then again, I'm not 20.) SF (proper, not the Bay Area in general) is the birthplace of cafe society. Mountain biking was born on Mt. Tam. This is a unique, beautiful place, and a lot of people can't figure it out -- and so they move. That's fine: we're already the largest state in the union. We don't need any more people, thank you.

probablycorey• 16 years ago

  San Francisco is fun, don’t get me wrong. Compared to New York, 
  it’s boring. I have trouble even thinking about living in an 
  apartment in Mountain View, Cupertino or Palo Alto. Those places 
  are socially dead.

Mountain View, Cupertino or Palo Alto are not San Francisco. It is like saying...

  New York City is fun, don’t get me wrong. Compared to San Francisco, 
  it’s boring. I have trouble even thinking about living in an apartment 
  in Staten ISland, East Rockaway or Westchester. Those places 
  are socially dead.

moxiemk1• 16 years ago

True, but the error is more of a mis-choice of words ('San Francisco' instead of 'Bay Area') rather than ideas, since If we're only considering San Francisco, the tech dominance starts to fade a little bit.

Also, while we're calling people for misspeaking, Staten Island is New York City.

jseliger• 16 years ago

Also, while we're calling people for misspeaking, Staten Island is New York City.

True, but Staten Island feels like New Jersey -- even, I suspect, to most New Yorkers. I have a friend from Staten Island, and when I talk about going back to New Jersey, it drives her crazy.

I can't imagine people from New Jersey minding being mistaken for New Yorkers...

chaostheory3• 16 years ago

Every once in awhile, you see a Google emerge from the Valley. But for every Google emerging from the Valley, there are ten thousand equally ambitious startups that fail. Some of them fail catastrophically... Given the lifestyle in the City, products are much closer to the pavement and are a solution to a real-world problem from Day 1. Not some social network plaything.

This is the main reason NY will never usurp Silicon Valley. Tech-wise NY's culture is too conventional.

"Why build Z when X is good enough?"

"This idea is stupid."

"What's the point? It doesn't make any money."

capedape2• 16 years ago

Having lived both places SF feels like the place where new ideas meet with the least resistance. In New York I'm more inclined to want to go out and ogle girls in summer dresses, but NY is a very inspiring place to live, no doubt.

usaar333• 16 years ago

Nothing like an inflammatory rebuttal to an inflammatory essay.

"The social component of a real city with museums, clubs, venues, pubs, bars and barcades is important."

SF has all of these. Obviously less by virtue of being in a metro area a third the size of NYC, but you aren't going to get bored.

"Am I paying for a car? No."

Many San Franciscans don't drive. That being said, having a car always has its benefits - and a car in NYC (at least in Manhattan) is even tougher than in SF.

"In short, New York City is more interesting and—I believe—better suited for the startup and a young guy’s lifestyle"

Well, we all have different lifestyles. I enjoy yearlong mountain biking that's only minutes away. I enjoy awesome snowboarding only 3 hours away. I enjoy climbing 14,000 foot mountains. I enjoy not sweating in humid, hot summers and freezing in snowy, cold winters.

I've spent about a month of my life in NYC (over various trips) and would hands down take SF over it.

dmor• 16 years ago

Title really should be "Choosing New York over Silicon Valley" - the city of San Francisco is night and day different from bedroom communities like Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc.

steilpass• 16 years ago

>along with Seattle, Los Angeles, Düsseldorf and Berlin So how is Düsseldorf, Berlin compared to NYC and SF? Would you have moved to Berlin if blib.tv was there?

Choosing New York over San Francisco

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