I think this depends on your personal definition of San Francisco. Toward the end of the last wave of tech (2017-2019 I estimate), a lot of the folks moving here to work were more interested in the income and prestige of working in a "cool SV company", along with the social-status effect of working in a "hip city" rather than actually doing interesting/hard work with interesting people. These folks can still brag about their prestigious employers and their fat salaries if they work remotely. These are the folks for whom the "end of San Francisco" is welcome, as they weren't particularly interested in the location anyway, and with a pandemic going on, there's no social status to be gained by living in a "hip city". For folks that are here for the weather and the intellectual, cultural, and racial diversity and prowess, I doubt the Valley and SF will be overshadowed any time soon. I don't really hard hard numbers for this though, so I could just be full of sh--.
A colleague moved to an office in boulder. Everyone there is senior, and not leaving. No space to get promoted. All the big stuff that could get them promoted is already taken up.
A different friend moved from a satellite office, and has now been promoted twice.
As for San Francisco, some would argue that the "end of San Francisco" already occurred because of the tech industry. People are obsessed with the idea that tech will leave town because they preferred the way it was before.
The Freeway revolts, yes. They are exoterically held up today as an example of early environmentalism and even anti-racism, but when I started learning about the history, the groups responsible, and the demographic changes that were happening at the time a very different esoteric picture emerged.
Check out the cover story of the 1954 edition of "The Negro Traveler's Green Book" (pages 11–18, inclusive) about how San Francisco is "fast becoming the focal point of the Negros' future" despite "being squeezed into two areas of San Francisco today":
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/3c85ba30-9374-0132...
Then realize that one of those two areas (Western Addition / Fillmore area) was connected to the Central Freeway by the former Turk / Golden Gate ramps and that that's when the fervor against the Western Freeway started in earnest.
And now so much for that formerly-bright future: https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2016/05/11/the-afr...
I'm sure it's totally coincidental that the conversion of the north-of-Market segment of the Central Freeway into Octavia Blvd kept the Oak/Fell connection but blocked the Turk/GGate connection entirely.
Just imagine what today's SF could be like if every new piece of architecture wasn't "hostile architecture". The pre-1956 appearance of Civic Center Plaza might be an indication: https://i.redd.it/u30i14rbd3e51.jpg
edit: I forgot to mention that Lincoln High is in a neighborhood that explicitly banned sale to non-whites via redlining and racial deed covenants:
https://default.sfplanning.org/Preservation/sunset_survey/Ad...
"In San Francisco, many of the largest private builders of the 1920s to 1950s—such as Baldwin & Howell Henry Doelger, Standard Building Company, and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (Parkmerced)—included racial covenants or discriminatory practices prohibiting non-Caucasians from purchasing and/or renting properties, particularly in the western and southwestern area of San Francisco. It is interesting to note, however, that Sunset District builders typically did not adopt racially restrictive deeds until the late 1930s."
The Western Freeway, of course, would have connected these neighborhoods quickly up to all the others. As to why the Sunset District didn't adopt racial covenants until the 1930s, I wager it might have something to do with most of it not existing yet :)
This is what the Sunset Ave area looked like in 1938, for example: http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/e0zozf
A black swan pandemic highlighting the inadequacy and fragility of our public health systems will do that.
I rarely see needles unless I get pho in the Tenderloin, which is the neighborhood that some people seem to think is the only one in the city. SF is the most beautiful city I’ve lived in by a mile.
My SO works at Twitter and was shocked to see journalists say they were permanently WFH. What Dorsey actually said was that if managers approve certain roles can stay remote, but most managers plan to bring teams back to the office, with 2-3 day WFH being the most popular option.
Rents went down downtown, because everything is closed. It’s a huge leap to assume that will stick and rents are still astronomical given everything is closed.
I can’t tell you the reason, but people are just obsessed with this “end of San Francisco” narrative despite a ton of hard evidence to the contrary. I studied CS after the dotcom and people were convinced all programming jobs were going abroad since programming can be done anywhere, instead Bay Area engineering comp quadrupled. Now instead of going to Mumbai it’s going to Denver or Montana, doubtful.
People saw companies like Reddit, Yahoo, and Twitter lay off all their remote workers. They saw Googlers in MTV get the most promotions. There is understands skepticism “this time is different.”
It’s funny how there are so many articles about how Silicon Valley is leaving the Bay Area but not a single one about how Wall Street is leaving New York. People just get hung up on “code monkey work can be done anywhere “ and ride the media wave. There’s been a tech bubble waiting to pop and an exodus from Bay Area for 10 years now, in the minds of journalists and the blogosphere. In the real world, not so much.