"The weather is beautiful and actually beats SF" --respectfully, what the hell do you mean "actually"?? Weather-wise San Diego is quite literally paradise. There is no competition, SF stinks.

There's no fog, sun every single day. Everyday can be beach day (and unlike here when you go to the beach you don't get bundled up like a J Crew catalog and bring blankets-- not towels-- and shiver like isosceles on some muggy wet sandy beach.)

We need to get going on the revolution and get out of these lame, expensive $2200+ apartment complexes and get after San Diego. Bad part about San Diego, besides dearth of opportunity right this minute (but it's changing apparently), is that it's pretty dull. There are little pockets of civilization but it's almost like San Jose in some parts.

San Diego's big problem it seems like is that you need to be at Qualcomm or some biotech or government contracting company to exist there. Or if you have some special gem that happens to be in San Diego, then that works too. But short of that there's not a lot of opportunity unless you really know where to look. Young talent needs to get out of there if they want to grow a bit in whatever they're doing.

San Diego is a truly amazing place. What's awesome is you can also get down to Mexico for dinner and come back same night. Great city but needs help.

As an engineer who also grew up in San Diego and now works here full-time, I totally agree. I think there is tremendous potential for innovation in San Diego, the hardest part is finding investors. As you said, there are many great universities nearby, with plenty of young talent who might be disenfranchised with the high cost of living/lifestyle of SV(or maybe that's just me,the disenfranchised part, not the talent).

As a robotics/mechanical guy, it can be a little overwhelming to consider a startup, because prototyping hardware gadgets is pricey! But I have been looking at something like SBIR/STTR funding, because most of my widgets are navy/defense focused.

I would say some potential founders could use the same funding to build software, especially considering you don't have to give up any commercialization rights or ownership stake to get the funding.

SBIR is a neat program. I tried applying once but didn't get the grant. I've heard tell that they tend to favor PIs with advanced degrees. Sadly, I only have a bachelor's.

find a university collaborator (it might help with credibility if you do not have a good footing in the field) and go for it.

Venture capitalist Mark Suster makes an interesting case for why Los Angeles would have the greatest chance at being #2 behind Silicon Valley. This comment is not meant to dampen anyone's thunder in playing up San Diego. Instead, the intention is for others to listen to how Mark sells Los Angeles. Take notes on how he describes the successes of LA that can lead to greater things. Plagiarize his persuasive narrative style as a template for selling San Diego's business potential. (E.g. mentally do search&replace of LA companies to SD companies). That way, people hear more than just SD's great weather and more affordable housing.

The entire 2hr20min interview has amazing insights across a wide range of topics but here are some deep links specifically about the LA scene:

- Los Angeles tech successes: 1:01:11 - 1:15:07 -- deep link: https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=1h1m11s

- How University of California's commercialization philosophy (2% royalties) is different from Stanford University (equity) (fyi the "Anderson" he's referring to is UCLA's Anderson School of Management) 1:43:50 - 1:47:26 -- deep link: https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=1h43m50s

- Snapchat's potential ripple effects in Los Angeles' ecosystem 2:10:50 - 2:12:24 -- deep link: https://youtu.be/u0s-vqF-2K0?t=2h10m50s

(If anyone likes those excerpts, put the Youtube player on 3x playback acceleration and watch the entire 2hr20mn talk. It's extremely educational.)

There's so much selling in this post I get tired just by reading it.

I grew up in San Diego, have been working on tech in SF for almost a decade, and love the idea of moving back.

The quality of life in (western) San Diego is so hard to beat. A couple dozen (or hundred) of us moving back with some meaningful experience and success could go a long way towards making San Diego a viable place to more easily build and sustain real companies.

Have you been back recently? I visited SD last month after being gone for 4 years... It was not the same to me. Very dry and dirty. Maybe living in Colorado has made me spoiled but it just seems different.

This. I'm from Montana, and while I love the weather here in SD, the glamour has worn off. The cost of living is astronomical, pay insufficient to compensate, and there are surprisingly few opportunities for what I do (Data Science). Oh, and while I love the beach (toxic water and all), I think a lot of SD is just... UGLY. Brown, dirty, desert. Of course part of this is all the hard scaping taking place. Everyone ripping up green and replacing with rocks and dirt isn't going to help things look pretty.

All in all, my wife and I are looking for an exit. Unless I can start making six figures in the next six months I don't think we'll make it another year here. We've felt squeezed since we arrived and it's not getting any better.

We've been here three years so far.

Yeah I was there last month, and had fresh sashimi and fish tacos sitting on the the deck at Point Loma Seafoods, where it was still 70 degrees and glorious at 6pm. And then I flew home to a cold, gray SF ;)

After living in Colorado for several years (not in Denver) every city I visit seems very dirty. And I grew up in NYC.

of course it's changed, the entire state is in a drought! for 4 years! it's a real problem! have you seriously not heard of this?

> Meanwhile the housing is still affordable compared to the Bay Area, if not cheap on a national basis. And the Valley is an hourlong Southwest flight away.

I see lots of >$1 million homes and >$1500/month rents for apartments, in the suburbs. Do you have any specific areas in mind? I'm thinking about moving.

In north county, places like Rancho Penasquitos (92129) have great schools and you can find decent single-family homes in the low $600's these days. It's about 15 minutes from the coast without traffic -- 25 mins from downtown. Nearby areas like Mira Mesa and Clairemont are cheaper but the public schools aren't as good.

$600,000 is affordable? How about smart? I don't mean to chide, but $600,000 for a cookie cutter tract-home is down right absurd. California is nuts.

The comparison is 2million in Palo Alto for an attached townhouse ~2200sqft. You might be able to get an 800k house in a bad neighborhood (east palo alto) that's 1100 sqft.

Friend in Buffalo is buying a house for 120k, difference is extreme.

> Friend in Buffalo is buying a house for 120k, difference is extreme.

Buffalo is an extreme example, both nationally and inside Buffalo itself. The most expensive single family homes in the city are ~$1.5MM [0]. These are mansions built in the early 1900s right on a beautiful park. Alternatively, you can buy an almost condemned house in a bad neighborhood for ~$5,000 [1]. People actually live in those places.

[0] http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/82-Meadow-Rd-Buffalo-NY-14...

[1] http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/647-Norfolk...

Buffalo is a rust belt place that has been in the wane for decades.

A decade ago, they were razing 50 houses a month.

And I'll bet the average salary and job prospects in Buffalo are reflective of the low house prices.

If you live in rural Kentucky, housing in many parts of Florida would be considered absurd. Comparing costs of living in wages against locations is apples and oranges. You can get a home with 2000sgft in Montana with 50 acres for the same price as a cookie cutter home in a subdivision in North Carolina. Housing is based on numerous economic factors including wage and comps (what other people have been willing to spend on similar homes in the area)

The difference between the housing market in the Bay and almost anywhere else is an extreme caricature of your analogy, though. At some point all analogies fail to provide an adequate description, but yours fails almost out of the gate here, in my opinion.

It doesn't scale though. I live in SD (moving to Austin) and the cost of living to income ratio is simply better elsewhere.

Absolutely. We're looking to move as well. Can't handle the cost of living here in SD.

$600,000 for a house in California sounds pretty cheap to me too. That's the price of an apartment in Toronto and even senior software developers here are lucky to clear US$80,000 a year.

Toronto dev here. How many years qualify you as senior in the city? On average how likely is it to score six-figures (CAD) within let's say 4 years?

Definitely not staying here long term. Gonna try to move down-south where developers are better compensated and cost of living isn't so much.

Yeah but it's well known the housing market in Toronto is crazy too...

If you look on realtor.ca, you can find many many apartments in Toronto for less than half of that.

It is, which is a big part of my decision to move from SD to Austin in two weeks. I make the same salary and cost of living is ~30% less.

You could buy a huge house for that here in Bend, and we're probably at or near the top of the latest real estate cycle.

It's almost as dry as San Diego here in theory, but a heck of a lot colder in the winter.

McMansions are pervasive in all states/cities. And their overpricing is a common. It's not California, it's the American economy, built upon housing.

I love PQ.

Guys PLEASE don't come to San Diego.

I like it the way it is and would hate to see it turn into another Bay Area.

On a more serious note I still have no idea why people haven't figured this out and all flooded the place... You could have some killer startups here..

I guess it's good if you have a family and don't go out. Other than that, it's BORING!

Other than the fact that there's no cheap talent to build the start-ups with because you can't live here and work for cheap...

This!

Can confirm: currently live in Rancho Penasquitos and it's great if not a little suburban. That said, if I were a little older and had a family it would be perfect.

>In north county, places like Rancho Penasquitos (92129) have great schools and you can find decent single-family homes in the low $600's these days.

Not true. I just bought a house in PQ and there's no WAY you can find anything below 650.

Depends on which part. North-east PQ (over by Rolling Hills) homes were built in the early 70s and are still going in the low 600's. I believe west PQ (Black Mountain Rd area) homes are newer and more expensive.

we could start a PQ HN meet-up. My treehouse accomodates 4 and has a pulley system. We can haul up buckets of beer :)

Note to self: uptownfunk, falkenb0t also in PQ. That's 5

I'm in UC but work nearby at Intuit. Lots of us.

+1 for PQ meetup

Second Chance or BT's Southern BBQ would be good.

I'm interesting in restarting the old SD Hacker News Group. I have access to the old email list and there is an existing google group. How about combining efforts?

Sure. I know the owner of BT's.

Hey, I want in on this action! I live in Hillcrest and work in Poway!

Count me in too! Who knew we were so many?

+1 , would love to

Shhhhh! Just shhhhhusshh!

I don't think you have to worry... there is a NET outflow of people living in California[1]. Why? My mother always said if you don't have anything nice to say about a group of people, don't say anything at all.

[1]https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-ex...

There's a net outflow when considering purely domestic migration, maybe. California's population is still growing, driven by immigration and births.

Escondido is another reasonably priced suburb. My wife and I bought a nice house there in the mid $500s. The only downside of Escondido is that the school system is not great and it's a good 40 minutes from downtown SD.

+1 for Exco!

Wife and I bought a fixer-upper in old Escondido for a bit under 300. There's several tech companies in North County, and you can take Del Dios to the coast pretty easily (which is where I work).

40 minutes? Maybe using FasTrak.

Ha, true. Normally we aren't going there during rush hour. It's probably more like an hour or an hour and 15 minutes during rush hour.

Sounds like similar prices and commute to Daly City. Can anyone who knows both regions distinguish them for me?

Yeah, unless you wanna live in a box under a bridge (but even that's becoming more challenging), you'll find those prices you quote to be very accurate. And at $1500 you're not living in a nice area. That's about the cheapest we could find for a two bedroom in Clairemont with lead paint on the walls and asbestos in the ceiling. And buying is no better. $500K here will get you a square box in a "gentrifying" section of town and it'll need a lot of work.

Tldr: housing is NOT cheap on a national basis...only by comparison to NYC and the Bay Area. An easy Google search shows how unaffordable it is here.

So it's great here if you've got, or can make, a lot of money. But for everyone else, it's tough.

I lived in North Park for $1700/month in 1100 sq ft. Plenty of stuff within walking distance as well as only being a few miles from Downtown. Living right next to Balboa Park was great as well. Compared to LA (and the better paying / more diverse opportunities you can find there), I'd have to classify it as expensive.

I think the key qualifier there is "compared to the Bay Area"

> The computer science program at UCSD is typically ranked about 15th globally, CalTech is not terribly far north, nor is UCLA and UC Irvine and UCSB and UC Riverside, and SDSU, though it has a reputation as a party school, is no slouch.

Also USC and Harvey Mudd.

Yes! Thanks for mentioning Harvey Mudd. Great school.

IMO, Capital and Talents are the two major factors in determining whether or not a location has a potential to have a good and sustainable tech scene. You'd have to have good supply and demand for both to sustain a healthy tech scene, and the driving factor between the two is capital, not talents. The exodus of talents in SD is a symptom of weak local demand (not because of, say, not enough restaurant options); which in itself is a symptom of weak supply of capital. Any place's scale of tech scene reaches to a local equilibrium when the supply and demand for both factors levels up. Following that logic, San Diego seems to be going where that local equilibrium is, given the current scale of capital available in the region. But the fact that more VCs are looking at places outside of the bay may bring some hope to SD, depending on whether or not SD will be "the chosen city".

I grew up in SD too.. employment opportunities in general outside defense and tourism is not great. Neither is the pay. As the old joke goes, they pay you in sunshine.

Lower cost of living and lower median income make it a total wash, with the more interesting jobs requiring Uncle Sam's security clearance. My dream scenario is getting my LA based company to switch manufacturer to TJ and set up the R&D office in San Diego, but I'm already thinking, 'what if I can't find good people in SD'.

I'm going to be the naysayer here and say that a year and a half back when I was looking for jobs I considered all options up and down the California coast. My conclusion from my search was that I will not be moving to San Diego. The salaries are far below Orange County, which are below Los Angeles, which are less than Bay Area salaries. Now, money isn't everything, but I'd say tech culture (in terms of technology, meetups, like minded folks) are also ranked in the same order.

If someone wants to be a 'blub' programmer than SD is probably no worse than any other place, but someone looking to grow their career and have fun doing it, I'd recommend LA, OC, South Bay, and SF above SD whole heartedly.

If you think the place where you program determines whether or not you are a 'blub' I believe you are sorely misguided.

That was not what I meant at all. I mean if you aren't particular about the technology stack you are working with and/or hoping for a high salary, then odds are more in your favor in SD, vs. being picky.

I work in San Diego. I work for SPAWAR on missile defense technology for the navy, a massive presence in San Diego along with the marines. Uncle Sam has a pretty big budget for defense and lot of cool technology to play with. I get to work on things from device drivers to websites the whole gambit. Silicon Valley ain't the only place to learn, that's kinda the whole point of this whole internet thing.

You come off as really full of yourself for a guy who sounds like he does little more than write CRUD apps with the FotM web stack.

I'm not a web programmer at all, not sure why I come off that way. Also, since we're on HN, I assume most readers are familiar with PG's term 'Blub programmer', which more ore less means 'java' these days. shrug

What's the point of making more if you have to pay more to rent/buy a place and to live?

As a San Diego native who relocated to the Bay about five years ago: the income difference scales up faster than the rent difference. I've put away a lot of savings on that margin.

Now if your intent is to own a home, well, that's another story altogether. I'm generally priced out of even the cheapest areas.

>If someone wants to be a 'blub' programmer than SD is probably no worse than any other place

Weird, I always considered web devs who do little more than paste together abstractions written by other people to solve easy problems and then go talk about how awesome they are for doing it at meetups 'blub' programmers.

As someone who lived in NYC for 17 years and moved to SF 6 months ago, my anecdotal experience so far is that SF is nowhere near as intense as NYC, at least as far as workplace environment goes. Everything feels considerably more laid back to me.

Curious about the individuals' drive to succeed, make money, be known, and to "make it".

The west coasts trains you to be discreet about your ambitions, hard work, struggles, etc.[1] It's the cool thing to do. So you might have to look for subtle signs.

[1] grew up in SV, went to east coast Wall Street feeder school.

Yea NYC and SF are my favorite cities. I think you cleared up for me why that is.

ah okay, so basically the same reasons that everywhere else struggles to keep its tech talent.