Both Palo Alto and Mountain View are extremely friendly to commuters. SF is, too, but it's quite a long way away. That's not to say I don't know a lot of people that make the SF to MV or PA commute. A huge percentage of Google and Facebook employees live in the city. Though Googlers have a shuttle service, with WiFi, so they don't generally take Caltrain.
But, I agree. Commuting sucks the life out of you...even with a train, spending two hours each day in transit just wouldn't be worth it, to me.
And then it's cool for a short period of time, but pretty soon days fade into weeks and every time you dread it, especially when you realize its 45 minutes each way. Suddenly you're spending 10% of your waking time (which is like 40% of your free time) commuting and before you know it you're looking on Monster.com/eHarmony again.
Just a cycle I've observed many times that seems to occur with 100% frequency, though oddly I've never had either a job or girlfriend who was over 15 minutes away.
I guess there are local buses at either end. Emphasis on guess, however, since everyone I know in the Valley commutes by car, except for the truly diehard fifteen-mile-a-day bicycle commuter I used to know. Obviously she wasn't commuting from SF.