a small list of reasons why you might want to move to sf

the only two reasons really to move to a place are the work and the people -- and often these things follow each other.

on work, i'm not sure there is a better place to be a technologist -- the value of in-person interaction is hard to measure. sf, to be fair, is a distracting place, but there are many instances of insane amounts of lock-in that look like co-founder renting. regular sleep schedule. home-office set-up (or very close), outdoor walk / gym, lock-in. your cofounder should definitely be your best friend though (or will likely become your closest friend). a thing that people don't talk about is that you do earn a lot more -- there are very few jobs for people that i know (perhaps outside of academia / phd-studenting / interning) that pay less than 100k a year (fun fact: this the low-income threshold in sf). people do work a lot though... visa stuff can be annoying.

the people are more complicated. this is, on some axes, the place with some of the most agentic, go-getty-strive-y folks in the world. i was on a career deep dive for my sister today where we looked at many of the jobs that are available in the economy, and they are, in fact, just things downstream of the tech, finance and politics -- gdpr analyst compliance, it systems administrator etc. -- of the decisions of people made here (and in new york, dc, london, and brussels). it does attract ambitious people, so you don't actually need to find people who are ambitious per se, but rather can select for other traits, and trust that the ambition is there (who is artsy or wholesome or friendly). it also attracts privileged people -- it requires a certain large family net (or a risk-neutrality often learned from such privilege or an absence of responsibilities in some other way) to drop everything and be. i do miss the academic vibe of the bostons and oxfords of the world, the sense that people are there to learn and to understand, and there is only some sense in which the bay areans are really getting contact with reality (i think they're better understood as trying to shape reality to their will).

there are other things:

unfortunately the whole safety stuff is real. you can't walk around alone at night in certain neighborhoods. hopefully trump can come in and apply some real security

i think about the weather here like i do the politics in singapore -- not much at all, never a distraction or hindrance day-to-day-life or plans or anything like that. you go out when you want, for how long you want, but it's pleasant.