Why I'm Moving to New York
Moving from SF to NYC as a someone who has lived in SF for three years
This year I’m moving to New York with three of my friends from SF. Only eighteen month ago, I wrote a few poems about San Francisco. So what changed?
I’ve lived in San Francisco every since I graduated college. It’s a beautiful place. I’ve always had my mind set on going to Silicon Valley. In college, I lived in Redwood City and rode the corporate shuttles to Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park. Before that, I dreamed about working in California, only applying to job openings in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I think there’s a different, more accurate way of looking at it: the time I’ve spent living in the Bay Area has given me the courage to explore something new. Embedded in the culture of SF are values: the importance of doing something good and meaningful for the world, building something important, and taking risk. One way I think about moving is me applying these values to my life in practice.
Developing My Worldview
SF tells one do change the world, but is the world actually like?
People say living in SF is like living in a bubble, but it’s hard to understand the extent of it until you live there. I spent one month last summer living with high school friends in Lower East Side and one thing stuck out to me: the people here are actually normal1.
I am so used to everyone working in tech, earning six figure salaries, and working in startups I almost forgot that it wasn’t reflective of most of America. Regardless of what Market St. might be showing, software hasn’t eaten the world yet. Meeting people in NYC reminded me that while SF might be ahead of the curve in some ways, but doesn’t totally reflect reality.
A friend who recently moved from SF to NYC is the founder of a SaaS sales startup and was describing to me the narrow-minded mentality of early-stage B2B founders in SF. When one is surrounded by other frontier B2B startups- it’s easy to see the market opportunity as zero sum. Competition is fierce, and a deal to one founder might mean a deal lost to another. The truth is that the world is much bigger - most sales forces in NYC do not care about the seed-stage ventures fighting to the death in SoMa. In the same vein, I think there is a real risk that only living in SF could lead to a lack of perspective that would otherwise be important in building a meaningful career.
Living Somewhere Dynamic
The most important work takes time, so might as well have fun while you’re at it.
Perhaps there are trade-offs. NYC is a city that has too much fun, while SF is a city that builds. One look at the built environment in NYC tells a different story. NYC is a dense, urban jungle filled with offices in skyscrapers, restaurants, and art galleries. Surely many many people have had and will have successful careers there.
The built environment of San Francisco, on the other hand, has looked exactly the same for the three years that I’ve lived there. In fact, it’s arguably gotten worse. Anchor Steam Brewing has closed, the original Philz has closed, and at least eight Walgreens have closed in the last three years.
What do we win by living in a city going through so much? Moving to a dynamic city with new, interesting people to meet and pursuing interesting things to work on is one way to have your cake and eat it too.
Taking Risks
Having the courage to do something different with the willingness to be wrong.
San Francisco is a city that encourages taking risk - it’s prestigious to leave a big, corporate job to build something new and work on your own thing. Ironically, I think the biggest risk that people in San Francisco are too scared to make is to try living somewhere else. New York City might not be a great place to be in tech, but it is even worse to never have known. I do not want to look back at my life and regret choosing work over having a better understanding of the world.
At the end of the day, San Francisco is still an amazing place. It’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the engineering talent there is top notch. I have no doubt that great things will be built there. The AI-boom is mostly concentrated in San Francisco. OpenAI is here. There surely will always be opportunity in SF, and I’m looking forward to the day where I fall back in love with all the Bay Area has to offer2.
I would recommend everyone in tech to spend some time living in SF. At the same time, I would recommend everyone to have the courage to lift their head out of the water and see what else is out there.
The demographic in NYC doesn’t exactly represent the American average, but it definetly is a more culturally diverse place than the Bay Area.
I sometimes tell people I’m going on a “Tech Bro Study Abroad.” Part of me sees myself returning to SF after a year or two. I definitely see myself returning sometime in my career.