After staying in SV for close to 2 decades and evaluating various other places to move to, I have ultimately chosen to remain in SV for the following reasons:
1. Decent weather - no snow, wind, storms. This is changing recently with wildfires, so may not last for long.
2. Density of tech talent - no matter what niche tech you are interested in, you will always find techies interested in that niche in SF - San Jose - Oakland triangle.
3. Job opportunities - there are actually 4 subfactors here. One is cultural - if your current gig fails for whatever reason, no one will look down upon you. Second - a new job can be found very soon, since you can compete with remote-first jobs with the added advantage of having exclusive access to companies insisting on RTO. Third - you have a variety of opportunities available, from pre-seed stage startups to behemoths. Fourth - if you are married to a non-techie like me, your partner can also find a new job relatively easily if they have to, compared to a lot of cheaper places where there were no non-tech lucrative jobs available. This was actually a surprising bottleneck for us when evaluating different places.
4. Immigration friendly - as a non-white immigrant, SFBA is a very welcoming place. That is not an exclusive advantage since any big city can compete on that front these days, but it also rules out a lot of cheaper places for us where it will be hard to integrate socially.
5. Non-competes - seriously, this is one of the biggest advantage of California for employees. I do not want additional constraints on my job mobility.
1. Decent weather - no snow, wind, storms. This is changing recently with wildfires, so may not last for long.
2. Density of tech talent - no matter what niche tech you are interested in, you will always find techies interested in that niche in SF - San Jose - Oakland triangle.
3. Job opportunities - there are actually 4 subfactors here. One is cultural - if your current gig fails for whatever reason, no one will look down upon you. Second - a new job can be found very soon, since you can compete with remote-first jobs with the added advantage of having exclusive access to companies insisting on RTO. Third - you have a variety of opportunities available, from pre-seed stage startups to behemoths. Fourth - if you are married to a non-techie like me, your partner can also find a new job relatively easily if they have to, compared to a lot of cheaper places where there were no non-tech lucrative jobs available. This was actually a surprising bottleneck for us when evaluating different places.
4. Immigration friendly - as a non-white immigrant, SFBA is a very welcoming place. That is not an exclusive advantage since any big city can compete on that front these days, but it also rules out a lot of cheaper places for us where it will be hard to integrate socially.
5. Non-competes - seriously, this is one of the biggest advantage of California for employees. I do not want additional constraints on my job mobility.