It’s almost my one year anniversary of moving to the bay area, getting out of small town Santa Barbara where everything moves too slow while you’re watching the coastline. That’s one thing I really missed about SB, nothing was ever stressful and you can take long walks on the beach to feel at peace. Life was easy going, but the town just feels like a dream, out of touch with reality, and nothing ever really happens. Part of the reason why I moved to the bay area. I left small beach town for a fast paced life. When I first moved out to Silicon Valley, I was ready to put my foot down, stomp out some stereotypes, and make it big in this tech world. I quickly realized my skills and experience was out of date as soon as I started at my early stage 3-person startup. There was lots of learning to get done and work to do. Everyone seems to be constantly working, on their MacBooks coding away on sublime. All social meetups groups were cantered to how to program, UX design, HTML, JavaScript etc. Everyone seems to be a CEO or co-founder of some sort, and every conversation involves discussion about their​ new groundbreaking product that’s gonna change the world. It’s a make or break society.

The good:
Huge foodies culture anything north of San Mateo but there’s some great eatery’s in the South Bay. You’ll be able to dine at some world renowned restaurants with Michelin stars in sushi to dosas to legit French patisseries. Awesome hipster culture in SF. People are out there but totally friendly. So much cultural things to do. So much amazing Indian food. I go to Japanese festivals every week. Everything I could look for I can find. At first I was blown away by the diversity of the area, and everyone is really nice. Love the hipster culture in SF. Gluten free, grass fed meat, fresh food options. The microbrewery beer scene is wasn’t as abundant as in SB but still delicious ( I’m trying to cut back anyways so good motivation). SF is absolutely amazing.

The bad:
Techie engineers are douchebags, but I’m an engineer too so I guess I’m in the same category. If your skill set doesn’t align with their company, they quickly dismiss you and don’t even bother getting your contact details. I had a discussion with a CEO of a software company at a university alumni event and I told him I was a hardware engineer, he expressed some doubt for me to be able to find a job around here, then proceeded to show me photos of his daughter. His conversation immediately changed when he started talking to my boyfriend who’s a data scientist. He even gave him a business card to connect! Other people I’ve talked to, are working too much. My friend works weekends always pressured to finish up her work and stays up to 3am often and she says enjoys it. I would go to a weekday concert in SF and after the concert, I’d see guys whipping out their MacBooks and continue to code. I guess the thing with programming is that it either works or it doesn’t, and maybe you can spend hours on something, if doesn’t work, means you’re not progressing so you’ll have to continue putting time into it. You’ve seen Silicon Valley the HBO show? It’s reality, and it hurts me to watch that show because it’s painstakingly accurate. Everything south of Palo Alto/Hayward is just a family community full of boring married couples suburb. There was a shooting at a strip mall about 2 blocks from my house and a dude died but I still went there to a sports bar like 4 days after to see the warriors win the NBA championship.

The ugly:
Met some people who are basically trash on Earth and others who are outright rude and fuckers who put their child on a pedestal and allow them to damage other people’s property (not gonna get into this). Parts of SF are literally shit. There were times where I wonder if it’s human shit or animal shit in the streets. Every time I take the BART or go to SF there’s always a creepy homeless guy taking off his pants. Apparently public nudity is not illegal in the city. Parts of SF are so trashy and riddled with homeless that it’s the most disgusting city I’ve been to, and I say it’s worse than DT LA. That tech gender inequality and treating women like crap, it’s true. The tech job/interview scene is fucking not what work you can do but who your buddies are and where they can get you into. I’ve been interviewing nonstop for over a year for bay area related jobs and got job offers that were not even in the area.

In summary…

Overall I’m glad to be in the Silicon Valley though it could be better, but this is the life I wanted. I wouldn’t return to Santa Barbara, it was great, but it wasn’t my town. Working at startups are tough but there might be high reward. Job competition is high, diversity in engineering is low with respect to women. So the struggle is mostly in the work and lack of equal women to men ratio having to work 2x as hard. The small cultural things I experience in “happening” SF is totally worth it.