Second off: I do not live in the Bay Area. I never have. I’ve had a reasonably successful career, and now co-run a fast-growing tech company. But b

The case against living in the Bay Area, for ambitious tech people

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2024-11-24 16:30:08

Second off: I do not live in the Bay Area. I never have. I’ve had a reasonably successful career, and now co-run a fast-growing tech company. But by the standards of this tweet, I and many well-known tech people around the world lack either judgment or ambition. Maybe both!

What makes Flo’s tweet such perfect engagement bait is that there’s no sufficiently ambitious accomplishment that would disprove it.

Why? Because it’s tautological. Bay Area people, in the frame of this tweet, are by definition the most ambitious people in tech. Thus, ambitious behaviors are behaviors that take place in the Bay Area. Round and round we go.

It’s circular thinking, but as G.K. Chesterton liked to point out, all circles are perfect. They just may not be big enough to hold all of reality.

Look, if you want to play the Tech Industry (tm) game the way Bay Area people are playing it, you should absolutely be in the Bay Area. You will be surrounded by people who are living and breathing AI and devtools and infra and open-source. You will rub up against funders and founders and grifters and strivers of all stripes. It’s a tight-knit industry and the groupthink can be suffocating.