On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:41:07PM -0500, Derek J. Balling wrote: > On Dec 12, 2011, at 4:35 PM, Luke S. Crawford wrote: > > where do you people live? I personally noticed a huge upgrade in what > > I perceived my own social standing to be when I moved to silicon > > valley from the central valley. > > OK, I'll stop you right there. > > Silicon Valley is its own Private Idaho when it comes to tech employees > having any sort of street-cred or respect. Outside that bubble, things are > radically different.
My point is that it varies by location. My belief is that there are likely other urban centers where this is similar; I see two factors at work. First, large urban city vs. small town; I think that in a small town, well, you have this kind of blue-collar pride that looks down on most white collar type work, especially among the young, and if you have a specialist job, well, employers are thin upon the ground. You will likely encounter few who understand your profession. Next, well, I believe that there are many professions that are also geographically concentrated. I bet that an actor living anywhere other than southern California would complain that nobody understands them (even if their reception by the general public might be positive, I doubt that's always pleasant.) Silicon valley is where our industry happens. Of course, as someone pointed out, the kids need to see this "cool factor" - even if it won't make them cool in school, (and I doubt that anything that requires much studying will help with that, ever.) they need to know that they will have okay lives after graduating, so it's more than making an okay life for ourselves; we have to communicate that we live okay lives to those young people. > You're right, I've lived there, I'm sure many others list-members still do, > and it can be a really great environment (if it wasn't so blasted expensive), > but it doesn't reflect the normative respect level throughout the rest of > society, unfortunately. Housing is expensive, but most other things are not that far off from the rest of California. (And while rent is on the rise, housing prices have crashed; it's now realistic to get a single family home for under $350K, and a condo well under $250K, while staying in silicon valley proper and out of san jose.) Wages, obviously, are also higher (not as much higher as housing is, but still, significantly higher; I don't know many technical people that spend the dominant portion of their income on housing.) but perhaps more importantly, the density of employers is massive. From my condo I can walk to many different companies that could plausibly hire me; and within commute distance, there are many thousands of employers. If you buy a house (or otherwise don't want to move) this is absolutely huge. Really, it's worth thousands of dollars every job change even if you lease. So yeah; that's the big economic reason to move here; you can change employers without moving house. Of course, the biggest reasons I'm here are all social, but there are some very good economic reasons for a technical person to live in the valley, too. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
