Ask HN: How's working in the Silicon Valley today?

37 points by askee 11 years ago | 23 comments

I'm currently on the lookout for a new job after finishing my PhD in CS, but my last question didn't receive much love.

Therefore now, all-new, condensed and brief: How is working in the valley today? Especially if you are not much into the social media side of things and like to get your hands dirty the old-fashioned way (e.g. C,C++, system-level stuff, infrastructure, bare-metal development and so on)?

Would you recommend moving there despite the housing situation and inflation tendencies?

How many hours a week is the rule? >50? >60? >80? Is the income worth the additional hours and is there much left to live from after taxes and basic expenses? Is the working culture and atmosphere still inspiring? (Has it ever been?)

Real-life experience and tips welcome :)

silverpikezero 11 years ago |

Longtime lurker, never posted on HN before. I am a mid-career software engineer working for a hardware company.

I don't live in the Palo Alto area and SF itself, because the cost of living is incredibly high. They are nice places for sure, and the social scenes there are more developed. You will have to pay to play there though.

Housing is very expensive, rents are very expensive. I see it as a tax on job portability. The important upside is that SV is the center of the universe for interesting computer science work. I have lived in several other places, and if you want to prioritize your career, and I am certain SV is the place to do it.

I am what is probably now considered "old-skool" (e.g. C++, semiconductors). There are still many opportunities in this space. Mail email me at ynka8+z1i2opfxuvoo@sharklasers.com if you are interested in talking about a job opportunity; the startup I work for is hiring.

I don't like the typical SV startup culture, I find it pretentious and too youthful. The HBO series Silicon Valley is more accurate I think than the general public realizes. That's a bit ironic since I work for a startup right now. :P I find that older engineers make much better decisions, and I'm pleased to be able to work with late-career heavy-hitters in my current company. It makes for a much more stable work environment, and our biz-dev prospects are more realistic than the social media rocket-ship blastoff overnight model.

askee 11 years ago | |

> The important upside is that SV is the center of the universe for interesting computer science work.

This is so true! (Even by my limited experience) Comparing job offerings in my home area vs offerings of any random company in the valley, the SV company wins. It's unbelievable how few interesting CS jobs there are in the rest of the world in comparison.

percept 11 years ago | |

Without projecting too much, I think there's much comfort and benefit in that--having some mileage under one's belt, relaxing and realizing it's a long trip (and behind every peak is another valley, until the next).

Cuyacap 11 years ago |

I moved out to Silicon Valley a little over two years ago. My experience with the area has had its positives and negatives, but it has mostly been negative.

I worked in QA for a little over a year at a startup in Mountain View. Firstly, the hours were horrible. I was consistently working twelve hours a day during the week and at least four hours a day one day per weekend. This was finally pared back after I and another member of the QA team started to complain about the hours. Neither the pay nor the equity I received was really fair for the amount of work I put in.

Furthermore, whenever I attempted to advance my skills beyond the QA position, I was blocked again and again. I was only allowed to commit code after I got fed up with an issue, fixed it myself, and basically begged a developer to look at it. It was a two-line fix; however, most of the developers assumed I couldn't write code properly simply because I didn't have a CS background.

Lastly, it was the management layer directly above that finally made me decide to quit. My manager and one of the developers I worked with consistently had this annoying feud going on between them. I was always stuck in the middle of it. All I wanted to do was to complete my job and go home without a headache. Towards the end, that became impossible.

So, if you want to work long hours for horrible compensation, to be pigeonholed into a position and never be allowed to grow your skills, and to be surrounded by people who cannot seem to grow up, then come to Silicon Valley and try your hand at being part of something that may or may not become the next greatest company.

Bahamut 11 years ago | |

Ouch - I try to encourage my QA people to write code if they find something wrong and they feel it's easy to fix, and I am at a startup in downtown Palo Alto.

I successfully fought management to get them to allow time for the other senior engineers to mentor the junior developers, and for all to explore new technologies after a massive burnout session of product development to meet an overly aggressive release deadline - I threatened to quit if big changes weren't made, and I was by far their most productive frontend engineer.

Not all startups are equal - just as it can be difficult to find the career that interests you, it can be just as difficult to find the company you would like to work at.

hga 11 years ago | |

I don't see anything that you've said that's unique to Silicon Valley, except perhaps for the extreme hours which I never experienced. Especially the "QA gets no respect" bit; I jointed Lucent for a QA including programming QA stuff job and it was a miserable, never again, I advise all my friends to avoid it like the plague.

Cuyacap 11 years ago | | |

I come from banking in the Midwest. While I worked some long hours occasionally, it was never as bad as what I have experienced here in Silicon Valley. I'm specifically talking about the geographical Silicon Valley, not just the tech scene in the area. On top of that, I'm going to claim unrealistic work / life balance is something common to this part of the country. I've returned to banking out here, and I still find there is an unrealistic expectation of how many hours an employee should work a week.

With that said, I don't really mind the long hours if I am properly compensated. It's not the long hours that bother me. It's the thought that I have nothing better to do than to serve the company at any time of the day. Employment is a mutually beneficial economic relationship. Out here, it seems that a lot of employers think the employees should be thankful they are allowed to work there.

DanielBMarkham 11 years ago |

I've worked all over the U.S., and oddly enough, am now only working in SV. Been here about 3 months.

Single? Young? Do it in a heartbeat. Get as much experience doing various things as you can. In the right spot, you can't beat the experience here. I'll also second what the others said about culture: go walking around downtown Mountain View or Palo Alto sometime and just listen to the chit-chat. Very cool stuff.

Older? Married with kids? Heck if I'd want to do it. Those same really cool 20-something masters-of-the-universe are probably also a major pain to have to deal with. Yeah, it'd be cool to bump into somebody in an elevator and start discussing NoSQL. No, it wouldn't be cool to go to some function like a PTA meeting or some meeting of the city council and have dozens of upper-income dweebs with little experience in conflict resolution.

I would also be very careful that you're not getting screwed over by a young startup that's going to crash and burn and take you with it -- or become one of the drones for one of the super huge companies. The sweet spot is between those two extremes. I imagine it would be extremely easy to wake up in two years and find you've lost a huge chunk of your life with little to show for it. Don't do that.

nmjohn 11 years ago |

I would say first, it depends on your personal life.

Depending on where you're coming from, moving a family out here may be a challenge. If it's just you I absolutely would recommend it, if not I still would recommend it, but there just are far more considerations to think about.

How many hours you'd work tends to have a wide range. All the current responses suggest insane hours are guaranteed. I probably work between 40-50 hours a week. The week before our last big feature release it was probably 60 or so, but that is the exception not the rule. This is going to depend entirely on the stage of the company you work for and the company itself.

As for salary, I make about 60-70% more than I would have if I stayed in the midwest. I also would be making 30% more if I was working for a big company as opposed to a startup, though with substantially less equity. That being said, I pay 2-2.5x for my apartment than I would have paid back home. However I can walk to work and have my groceries delivered - thus don't have a car payment, car insurance, etc, so it is somewhat evened out. At the end of the day, I make enough to have plenty to live on.

The biggest thing for me though is the atmosphere, not just where I work, but in general - tech is the norm and walking down the street (at least in soma) I frequently hear people talking about database performance, or whether AWS is worth the price, or about a new library being released that makes doing X easier. I love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else. And is absolutely worth whatever the difference between what my net income after expenses is here as opposed to the midwest.

clubhi 11 years ago | |

I used to be able to relate to this. After about 10 years in the industry I find that I crave more diversity. I tend to try to eat lunch with the sales guys to get a break from discussing database performance.

akhilcacharya 11 years ago | |

>love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else.

Are there any universities with a similar atmosphere?

hyt7u 11 years ago | | |

I'm curious about this. I went to a good university (though not known for CS), and I thought that most of my classmates were apathetic/just in it for the money. I certainly never saw the sort of enthusiasm that I see from people on HN (or my co-workers at my startup job).

Are places like CMU or MIT utopias of hacking-related discussion?

(I mean at the undergraduate level, that is)

sfbayguy 11 years ago |

Life is hell as it is too expensive and traffic is bad. Eighty hours is minimal if you work for a small shop. Pay is subjective..it is all about sucking up rather than merit.

Valley has been long dead.

alain94040 11 years ago |

Let's just say Silicon Valley has the most opportunities, which means that if you don't like your current job (bad boss, long hours), you can find something better quite easily.

anw 11 years ago |

I've lived in a few major metro areas, so I'll take a shot at helping you. I'm interested in seeing if anybody else has run into these things happening to them, as well.

Coming from a background in CS, you have a definite advantage. There are a lot of tech companies out here, but I would not limit myself to that if I were you. There are plenty of opportunities where tech is an overlap with the actual focus of a company. Try not to get stuck in a particular mindset about what job you'll do, especially if you are just finishing your PhD and stepping into the "real world".

The Valley (I'm including all of the SF Bay Area, as well), is a great place, with a lot to offer. However, it can be a hard and cold place, especially if you don't know anybody out here.

Unless you're traveling along El Camino Real, or going into the center of cities, traveling is a pain. Services such as the Caltrain have limited stops at certain locations, and stop running at 10:30pm or midnight (depending on the direction). Muni can be packed and pass by usual stops if there isn't enough room (ususally will only happen around Chinatown and Northbeach areas). And BART is... a topic for another day.

This has given rise to Uber and Lyft providing a great convenience, but one in which you pay for. Sometimes having excessive multipliers on the usual fare you're charged. Taking an Uber in SF during a Giant's game day will see a spike in fare, for example.

The culture is its own thing. Having lived in Chicago and NYC, I've had my share of interaction with enough people. People in the valley are very friendly and very helpful—up front. Rather than not talking to you, or brushing you off, people will act very excited to meet you and talk with you. However, do not take this as them having an actual interest in you, or anything about you. This lone difference had made it difficult for me to actually understand who is a friend, and who is not out here.

Related to that, the dating scene out here is the same, from my experience. A lot of girls I've dated out here are looking for a guy who has a particular "thing". Whether that be he teaches yoga, has a dog, does art in the park, something they can tell their friends about. In NYC my experience has been a bit better. Girls seemed to be more attracted to me based on my personality, and "charm" for lack of a better word. I didn't feel the need to have a "thing" going on, just me being me.

Housing and where you live greatly alter your enjoyment. This also depends on what you want to do.

If you're looking for night life, you should definitely live in SF, Palo Alto, or San Jose. Anywhere else limits you to particular metros, or how much money you're willing to shell out for an Uber. There is a lot going on at any time in those 3 places, that finding groups, meetups, events, will be a great place to socialize.

Housing is expensive. Very expensive. But it's not terrible. A lot of companies take into consideration housing, so your paycheck will reflect being able to afford to live.

Your paycheck might look like a lot at $120,000, but it's not. Between rent, taxes, food, travel, you'll be living well, but not as well as some might think.

It's a good place to live, especially if you're in your 20's and want to further your career, and love technology. Outside of that, it's just another place with its own quirks.