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  #1  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2021, 8:31 PM
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dimondpark dimondpark is offline
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NYT: Tech Workers Who Swore Off the Bay Area Are Coming Back

Dammit. Can't they just stay away.

Traffic is really bad again, rental rates are soaring again, we're in a drought, etc. Let us have a breather.

Quote:
Tech Workers Who Swore Off the Bay Area Are Coming Back

Critics said the pandemic would make the industry flee San Francisco and its southern neighbor, Silicon Valley. But tech can’t seem to quit its gravitational center.

By Kellen Browning
July 15, 2021, 10:41 a.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, Greg Osuri decided he’d had enough of the Bay Area. Between smoke-choked air from nearby wildfires and the coronavirus lockdown, it felt as if the walls of his apartment in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks neighborhood were closing in on him.

“It was just a hellhole living here,” said Mr. Osuri, 38, the founder and chief executive of a cloud-computing company called Akash Network. He decamped for his sister’s roomy townhouse in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, joining an exodus of technology workers from the crowded Bay Area.

But by March, Mr. Osuri was itching to return. He missed the serendipity of city life: meeting new people, running into acquaintances on the street and getting drinks with colleagues. “The city is full of that — opportunities that you may never have expected would come your way,” Mr. Osuri said. He moved back to San Francisco in April.

The pandemic was supposed to lead to a great tech diaspora. Freed of their offices and after-work klatches, the Bay Area’s tech workers were said to be roaming America, searching for a better life in cities like Miami and Austin, Texas — where the weather is warmer, the homes are cheaper and state income taxes don’t exist.

But dire warnings over the past year that tech was done with the Bay Area because of a high cost of living, homelessness, crowding and crime are looking overheated. Mr. Osuri is one of a growing number of industry workers already trickling back as a healthy local rate of coronavirus vaccinations makes fall return-to-office dates for many companies look likely.

“I think people were pretty noisy about quitting the Bay Area,” said Eric Bahn, a co-founder of an early-stage Palo Alto, Calif., investment firm, Hustle Fund. “But they’ve been very quiet in admitting they want to move back.”

Bumper-to-bumper traffic has returned to the region’s bridges and freeways. Tech commuter buses are reappearing on the roads. Rents are spiking, especially in San Francisco neighborhoods where tech employees often live.

And on Monday, Twitter reopened its office, becoming one of the first big tech companies to welcome more than skeleton crews of employees back to the workplace. Twitter employees wearing backpacks and puffy jackets on a cold San Francisco summer morning greeted old friends and explored a space redesigned to accommodate social-distancing measures...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/t...area-back.html
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  #2  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2021, 8:53 PM
Camelback Camelback is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dimondpark View Post
Dammit. Can't they just stay away.

Traffic is really bad again, rental rates are soaring again, we're in a drought, etc. Let us have a breather.
Welcome back to 2019!
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  #3  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2021, 9:17 PM
homebucket homebucket is offline
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Not surprised. While some people might prefer working from home, I think there's still a decent amount that actually enjoy going into the office and seeing their coworkers and working face to face with them. For the companies that are offering a hybrid type of setup (3 days office, 2 days WFH) this is probably an ideal scenario.
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  #4  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2021, 9:20 PM
Chisouthside Chisouthside is offline
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SF is a really fun city despite all the issues and the Bay is a really beautiful area. I cant really see alot of transplants going back after experiencing living there.
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  #5  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2021, 9:21 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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I thought everyone was quitting their jobs and permanently living in the forest? Isn't that the prevailing narrative the last 16 months?

Or what about the other narrative - fed up re. high home prices, liberalism and congestion, and enabled by permanent WFH policies, Bay Area families were pining for McMansions in Indiana and Ohio. I mean, look at all the home you get for your money! And they'll pay you to work in your pajamas forever!
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  #6  
Old Posted Jul 18, 2021, 10:22 PM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Quote:
The Bay Area is on pace to set a record for venture funding. Here are the region's top 11 cities, when it comes to attracting funds.
By Cromwell Schubarth – TechFlash Editor, Silicon Valley Business Journal
Jul 14, 2021 Updated Jul 14, 2021, 5:22pm PDT

There's been a lot of talk during the Covid-19 pandemic about the Bay Area losing its position as the center of the venture and startup universe amid a supposed "exodus" of investors and tech talent.

But a new report from PitchBook Data and the National Venture Capital Association tells a very different story. The report makes clear that, far from losing its preeminence, the Bay Area is as dominant as ever when it comes to attracting venture investing.

In the first half of this year, Bay Area startups collectively raised $54.5 billion, according to the report. At that pace, they'll break the record total for a full-year — $66.4 billion, set in 2018 — in the middle of the current quarter.

Perhaps as impressively, it means that 36% of all venture dollars nationwide are going to San Francisco or Silicon Valley startups.
That's not far off the share the region garnered the last two years, even though the total amount raised by startups across the U.S. in the first half surged to $150 billion — already the second highest amount for a full-year . . . .

[The numbers--Venture funding Jan-June 2021]
San Francisco - $25.2 billion
Mountain View - $4.98 billion
Menlo Park - $4.4 billion
Palo Alto - $4.3 billion
San Mateo - $2.9 billion
San Jose - $1.9 billion
Redwood City - $1.1 billion
South San Francisco - $1.05 billion
Burlingame - $857 million
Sunnyvale - $798.7 million
Santa Clara - $624 million
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...es-raised.html

Who got money. (Print edition cover story SF Business Times)

Robinhood Markets - $3.4 billion
Waymo - $2.25 billion
Databricks - $1 billion
SambaNova Systems - $678 million
Stripe - $600 million
Sila Nanotechnologies - $590 million
Lacework - %525 million
Roblox - $520 million
Nuro - $500 million
Sofi - $370 million
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  #7  
Old Posted Jul 18, 2021, 11:23 PM
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dc_denizen dc_denizen is offline
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‘Hey we interviewed a few of our friends’

What amazing Journalism
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  #8  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2021, 12:18 AM
LA21st LA21st is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
I thought everyone was quitting their jobs and permanently living in the forest? Isn't that the prevailing narrative the last 16 months?

Or what about the other narrative - fed up re. high home prices, liberalism and congestion, and enabled by permanent WFH policies, Bay Area families were pining for McMansions in Indiana and Ohio. I mean, look at all the home you get for your money! And they'll pay you to work in your pajamas forever!
Looks like they got bored of Florida already.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2021, 2:11 AM
ocman ocman is offline
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There’s a strawmans argument that people are crawling hands and knees back to the city. For most, that was never a reality. It’s simply more practical to live a year in Ohio saving 25k in rent and come back when the covid was “over”. Although it was also a stupid Fox news feel-good argument to report that cities are being abandoned for good, as if Covid wasn’t a thing.
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  #10  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2021, 7:04 AM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocman View Post
There’s a strawmans argument that people are crawling hands and knees back to the city. For most, that was never a reality. It’s simply more practical to live a year in Ohio saving 25k in rent and come back when the covid was “over”. Although it was also a stupid Fox news feel-good argument to report that cities are being abandoned for good, as if Covid wasn’t a thing.
I'll tell you when they're coming back. I'll see the "for rent" signs disappearing and the condos selling again. There is one clue that a trickle has begun: Rents are no longer falling and have begun rising.

I will also tell you that not enough left to wreck the city's "vibe". The neighborhoods where the techies congregate are bustling again.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2021, 2:57 AM
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dimondpark dimondpark is offline
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As I've been saying for years and years and years, Silicon Valley's power has nothing to do with population growth, or even job growth, it's allllll about the equity capital and the faith the rest of the world has in area innovators and incubators.

Quote:
Originally Posted by San Jose Mercury News
COVID boomtown: Silicon Valley company values soar, fueled by tech

Silicon Valley’s tech companies are more valuable than ever, a sign that the technology and life sciences industries in the region managed to prosper despite coronavirus woes that jolted the economy.


By GEORGE AVALOS | gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: July 16, 2021 at 5:45 a.m. | UPDATED: July 16, 2021 at 3:53 p.m.

SAN JOSE — Silicon Valley’s tech companies are gaining value at a dramatic pace, a sign the technology and life sciences industries in the region have managed to prosper despite coronavirus woes that jolted the economy.

Starting in late March 2020, when the stock markets reached their low points during the COVID-19 outbreak, through the end of June 2021, the completion of the most recent quarter, the combined market value of Silicon Valley companies has more than doubled...

The report measured the change in value for public companies in Santa Clara County, southern Alameda County, San Mateo County, and San Francisco. The survey period stretched from March 23, 2020 through June 30, 2021. The report was prepared by Rachel Massaro, director of research for the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies.

During that stretch of slightly more than 15 months, the market value of public companies in those areas, roughly defined as Silicon Valley and San Francisco, soared 129.1%.

On the day of the market lows in late March 2020, companies in Silicon Valley and San Francisco plunged to a COVID era low of $5.5 trillion, derived from the combined value of these organizations.

By the end of the trading day on June 30 of this year, the combined market value of the companies in those regions had rocketed to $12.6 trillion.

Over the same 15 months, the value of the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 111.4%. The value of the broad-based S&P 500 increased 92%.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/07/...stock-economy/

So,
Total US Market Capital on Jun 30, 2021: $37.4 Trillion
Total Silicon Valley Market Capital on June 30, 2021: $12.6 Trillion

Silicon Valley accounts for 33.6% of all US Market Capital as of Jun 30, 2021.

https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/
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  #12  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2021, 4:41 PM
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sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LA21st View Post
Looks like they got bored of Florida already.
I don't know why but that literally made me LOL!
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