> So many of my coworkers were completely aware that they could double (or even triple) their salaries by moving to San Francisco/Seattle, but chose not to. Nasty politics, homelessness, crime, public defacation

Not that I've ever lived there (fellow Aussie like you, just visited it for work) – but my impression is that some of those problems – especially the homelessness, crime and public defecation issues – are much worse in San Francisco proper (Oakland too) than in (say) Silicon Valley.

One language issue here – Australians tend to use bare city names to primarily refer to metropolitan areas – an Australian who says "Sydney" or "Melbourne" likely means the whole metro area, not the "City of Sydney" or "City of Melbourne" local government areas specifically – whereas to an American, "San Francisco" usually only means "the City and County of San Francisco", and the whole metro area is "the Bay Area". An Australian is likely to think of Silicon Valley as part of San Francisco, to most Americans Silicon Valley is not part of San Francisco, rather (roughly) 45 minutes south of it (maybe closer to 30 minutes from the southern end of San Francisco proper to the northern end of Silicon Valley).

> my impression is that some of those problems – especially the homelessness, crime and public defecation issues – are much worse in San Francisco proper (Oakland too) than in (say) Silicon Valley

Kind of? Violent crime is always going to be higher in a city than the suburbs, that’s just life.

But homelessness…it’s rampant everywhere, although a different kind of homelessness. Think fewer tent encampments and more motor homes. There are RVs parked on El Camino for miles down Palo Alto and Mountain View.

Not, of course, on the actual residential streets, because the city made that illegal - which brings us on to the nasty politics, which I’d argue is worse in the suburbs than the cities.

Lack of RVs on my street is a feature, not a bug. I fail to see how this is “nasty politics”.

I'd say for Americans it depends on the city - for instance if someone says Los Angeles or Houston there's a good chance they mean those metro areas rather than the cities proper.

Probably because LA County has over 75% of the population of its MSA and over 50% of the population of its CSA; by contrast, however you define it (its MSA, the traditional 9 county "Bay Area", or its CSA), San Francisco County is only a minority of the population of its metro area. It isn't even the most populous county in the Bay Area–Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa all have significantly larger populations. Similarly Harris County and the City of Houston dominate the population of their metro area in a way in which the City and County of San Francisco does not.

I still think there is a difference here between American and Australian usage – American popular conceptions of geography pay far greater attention to local government boundaries than Australians do. That makes complete sense, considering that local governments in the US have vastly more power than those in Australia – here, courts, elections (even local elections), prosecutors, corrections departments, law enforcement, fire departments, ambulances/paramedics, public schools, public hospitals, public transport and land titles are all exclusively state government responsibilities, and in inner metropolitan areas, the state government runs the water supply and sewerage system as well. Americans pay much more mental attention to local government boundaries than Australians do, because those boundaries have a significantly greater impact on their everyday lives.

I've always considered it to depend mostly on whether we're talking about the current location or not.

So if we're actually in San Francisco metro area and I talk about "San Francisco", I probably mean the city proper. But if we're in DC and I talk about "San Francisco", I probably mean the metro area. Or, commonly, I actually mean somewhere specific but I don't expect my listener to know the more specific areas, so I just say "San Francisco".

I tell people from out of state that I’m from Chicago, because they’ve heard of that but not Geneva, Illinois.

> Nasty politics, homelessness, crime, public defacation, a general "fuck the poor" culture (on both sides of the political isle), gun violence

Not to be an apologist for any of this, but I find it hard to believe any of these were more important deterrents to the emigration of your peers than our capricious, byzantine, and dehumanizing immigration system.

People seem to have the bizarre attitude that San Francisco and its suburbs (which make up the great majority of the population of the SFBA) are some post-apocalyptic hellscape, which is mostly a narrative promulgated by the right-wing media, and with the exception of cost of living and homelessness/housing issues (which are hardly unique among major metros, including Melbourne) it's pretty far from the objective truth. Try visiting sometime.

> but I find it hard to believe any of these were more important deterrents to the emigration of your peers than our capricious, byzantine, and dehumanizing immigration system.

On average, it is easier for Australians to immigrate to the US than for people of most other countries, largely due to the special E-3 visa which the US has for Australians only.

I know several Australians who have moved to the US, mostly on E-3s and L-1s, and for university-educated professionals, the immigration process itself usually isn't a big issue. The question of whether you want to do it, whether it is the right thing for you and your family, generally looms much larger than visas.

No doubt US immigration can sometimes subject the unlucky to bureaucratic stuff-ups, the capricious application of arcane, unfair and incomprehensible rules – but on average Australians are less on the receiving end of that than most other nationalities – and Australia's immigration department is just as capable of that as the US is. An ex-colleague of mine has a Master's degree in IT, many years experience working in New York's financial sector, fluent in both English and Spanish (he's Puerto Rican), came to Australia on a temporary work visa, wanted to stay here for good, tried to switch to a permanent resident visa – he eventually succeeded, but Australian immigration put him on a very stressful "how can I find enough points?" run-around - when I'm thinking "why are we making someone like this jump through all these hoops? isn't he the kind of high value immigrant a country should be laying out the welcome mat for?"

Honestly, the idea that SFBA is post-apo?

I finally acquired it by visiting in 2015. Landed at SFO, went through pretty mediocre airport, then visited SF... and went "hey, this looks more like middle east war torn country than what I expected" - and my expectations were already dashed by things such as crowdsourced maps of tenderloin based on quantity of human feces on sidewalk.

Thing is, my mental model assumes that other places in USA are probably worse, if not in the same ways.

But the immigration system is biggest stopper, even for visiting, indeed.

The immigration system is probably relatively european/australian friendly. It's not rare to see people come and go to the US. It's also a constrained problem that you don't have to think about for a few years once it's cleared.

In that regard the other more day to day aspects would be more impacting.

On San Francisco+suburbs, I think it can't be that bad, but if I'm going to move somewhere, being able to freely explore the other cities/states is nice.

Also only judging from the net, I find it harder and harder to understand what to expect for a person of color for example. It seems to vary a lot depending on the city, or even the neighborhood, and there's enough cultural difference that just looking at people's twitter doesn't help much. The picture is either super bleak, or super bleached, with little nuance in many discussions.

I think most of us from elsewhere in the English-speaking tech world know very much what the Bay Area is like. I can't speak for Australians, but most Canadian tech workers have been there many times. But only some of us choose to move there even tho NAFTA makes it fairly trivial to do so. And many just end up coming back.

I don't think the SF Bay Area is a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Most of urban California is... fine.

It's just that when one immigrates to go take a job there, one isn't just immigrating to the Bay Area. One is immigrating to the United States of America. And ... that's a much bigger kettle of fish.

I think people here got the idea that SF is post-apocalyptic by visiting it for conferences, since the area around Moscone is especially bad, you only have to go on a short wander for lunch before you end up in the Tenderloin, etc.

The last time I visited SF (for WWDC), I witnessed more crime first-hand in one week than I had in my entire life before (and since). I also witnessed more homelessness than I've seen in any single city.

Those issues are 100% the reason I would never move the US. Immigration system complexity doesn’t even factor into it!

I earn probably half what I would in the US (and pay far more tax on what I do earn)

Hopefully the visit will not coincide with an epic fire, in which case it will indeed feel like a hellscape.

While wildfires are certainly a growing issue in much of the Western Unites States the area around San Fransisco is a relatively low risk area.

I realize you are just being snarky but Australians are no strangers to hellscape wildfires. Australia suffered a 60+ million acre wildfire in 2020, way larger than all California wildfires in that year combined.

I live in the SF Bay Area as well. He's right. We had multiple days where the smoke was so thick that the sun was blood red.

Here's a couple of news clippings from different days in 2020

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/one-year-ago-san-francis...

https://www.abc7news.com/amp/red-sunrise-bay-area-smoke-in-s...

Yep. The air quality issue does create anxiety for several relatives who live or visit Silicon Valley. There can be a few days a year that are intolerable for those with particular sensitivity and they must cancel their engagements and head out of town, or hole up in room with a quality purifier.

Can't really say that is a problem where I live, although recreational fires in fire pits are increasingly annoying as people increase outdoor gatherings in covid times.

Mostly just being sparky as far as hellscape but the air quality can be nasty in Palo Alto several days a year. Some people are indeed forced to take time off work and head out of town.

> Try visiting sometime.

While being rich enough

Large market with the same language and more or less the same culture. I am working on a b2b saas product in the EU; so far capital was not an issue really, nor good people. The marketing strategies per country and in different languages are pretty annoying and, unless you somehow go viral for the US and UK, you kind of have to have different plans (including prices) for every country here. French companies are prepared to pay for subtly different things than Spanish companies etc. In a previous product we did, we noticed this massive difference between NL and DE. It was just things that worked in NL really was a complete ‘nope’ in Germany and vice versa. It’s details but enough for companies to not take you over a local solution.

I would love to move back to California but had to relinquish my Green Card when I moved to Asia for over 2 years.

There is little chance to find a US employer sponsoring a new one. They just don't care to go through the process. Even though it's not too cumbersome.