For what it’s worth, I live on the east coast, am not particularly keyed in to the Silicon Valley world like most HN readers, and knew (assumed) immediately that MTV = Mountain View based on the context of the article and the comment. I think it’s pretty obvious given the overall context here.

For what it's worth, I live in Sunnyvale just next to Mountain View and I have never seen or heard this abbreviation used. I thought "I work at Google in MTV" described some internal Google department, and it wasn't until I saw "commute to MTV from SF" that it clicked.

Agree. Lived in Mountain View (mtnv?) for a few years. Never saw the MTV acronym. Maybe it's a google thing?

I've lived in Santa Clara for 3 years and I've never seen Mountain View referred to as MTV.

it's also the abbreviation used on the coaches going from San Francisco to "MTV"

That was one of the biggest culture-shocks for me when I arrived in the Bay Area. Everyone was like "So you'll be working in MTV?", a bunch of the local mailing lists were prefixed "mtv-", all the conference rooms were labeled "MTV-43-2-...", and I was like "What's this MTV....ohhhh, Mountain View". It's sorta like "The City" clearly means San Francisco to anyone living in the Bay Area, while it means New York City to anyone living in the Northeast.

Well, if enough people say it, it'll catch on. I'd bet that Google is rapidly becoming more important to most people than Music Television anyway.

Some common abbreviations (i've seen) used for Silicon Valley / Bay Area cities:

MP - Menlo Park (Facebook) PA - Palo Alto MTV - Mountain View (Google) SJ - San Jose SF - San Francisco

MPK is also a common abbreviation for Menlo Park.

I was only confused for a second then I got it from the context of his comment.

Agreed, MV makes more sense than MTV