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http://www.vox.com/2016/9/14/12892994/facebook-silicon-valley-expensive
it's tough for newcomers who rent and have young families to raise and feed.
By Matt Kulka, September 14, 2016.
It was slowly becoming real. I’d received a message from a Facebook recruiter over LinkedIn in July 2010. In August, I had phone interviews and then an on-site interview. A week after the on-site, I received an offer letter.
Facebook, the company that touched the lives of more than 400 million people per month, wanted to relocate me, my wife, and our infant daughter from Arizona to Silicon Valley so that I could work on the site reliability operations team. It was my dream job, in a place that always had an almost mythical allure to me. When I said yes, I was filled with excitement.
Five years later, I quit. Not because of the job — I loved working at Facebook. I left because I couldn’t afford to live in the Bay Area anymore, even on my generous six-figure Facebook salary.
I grew up dreaming of working in Silicon Valley
As an Ohio teenager in the 1990s, I held Silicon Valley on a pedestal. In my mind, it was a far-off land filled with people like me: people who spent their free time in front of computer screens just getting the darn thing to do interesting things. It’s easy to take for granted these days as computers and devices have infiltrated every corner our lives, but back then it wasn’t uncommon for people to shun the beige boxes and the people who just seemed to “get” them.
I got my first job in tech when I was just 17 years old, at a Cleveland-based internet service provider. It was 1998, and I had a deep admiration for the companies that were formed or hit stride during the early commercialization of the internet: names like Yahoo, eBay, Sun Microsystems, and Apple. Many of them seemed to be located in this one relatively tiny area of the country. Silicon Valley was hallowed ground to me, full of successes and failures, drama and activity.
SILICON VALLEY WAS HALLOWED GROUND TO ME, FULL OF SUCCESSES AND FAILURES, DRAMA AND ACTIVITY
Eventually the pull of Silicon Valley became too strong to resist: I moved to San Francisco in 2004 with only my computer and a few cardboard boxes. I worked remotely for a company based in New Jersey, and even then, being single, making a decent sum for a 23-year-old, and sharing an apartment with a newly met stranger, I quickly found out that the actual living costs add up if you’re not living under a rock. Trying to get a leg up on salary, I sent in some résumés to a few major companies, but the valley was in a recession at the time and I wasn’t even able to obtain an interview.
I relocated again to Arizona in 2005 at the suggestion of an Ohio friend who had settled in there. In the intervening five years, I adjusted nicely to the climate and scenery, found new work, and honed some of my system administration chops.
My first true taste of working for a Silicon Valley company came across in 2009 when I was hired by PayPal to be a part of its Scottsdale, Arizona, network operation center. At the time, I felt like even if this was as close as I got to working in Silicon Valley proper, my teenage self would still be proud.
Working at Facebook is like Disneyland for tech folk
There were plenty of considerations surrounding taking the Facebook offer. Could I survive in a place where almost everyone is imported top-tier talent? My doubts mounted as I remembered my first ill-fated run in San Francisco. I wasn’t looking forward to finding housing. I also had a 3-month-old daughter now and couldn’t afford to retreat in failure for a second time.
But I knew that if I didn’t take the job, I would always wonder what the ride would’ve been like. Behemoth companies don’t rise very often, and the prospect of being a part of one that was pre-IPO was exciting. After weighing the benefits and concerns with my wife, we decided to accept the offer for my dream job.
it's tough for newcomers who rent and have young families to raise and feed.
By Matt Kulka, September 14, 2016.
It was slowly becoming real. I’d received a message from a Facebook recruiter over LinkedIn in July 2010. In August, I had phone interviews and then an on-site interview. A week after the on-site, I received an offer letter.
Facebook, the company that touched the lives of more than 400 million people per month, wanted to relocate me, my wife, and our infant daughter from Arizona to Silicon Valley so that I could work on the site reliability operations team. It was my dream job, in a place that always had an almost mythical allure to me. When I said yes, I was filled with excitement.
Five years later, I quit. Not because of the job — I loved working at Facebook. I left because I couldn’t afford to live in the Bay Area anymore, even on my generous six-figure Facebook salary.
I grew up dreaming of working in Silicon Valley
As an Ohio teenager in the 1990s, I held Silicon Valley on a pedestal. In my mind, it was a far-off land filled with people like me: people who spent their free time in front of computer screens just getting the darn thing to do interesting things. It’s easy to take for granted these days as computers and devices have infiltrated every corner our lives, but back then it wasn’t uncommon for people to shun the beige boxes and the people who just seemed to “get” them.
I got my first job in tech when I was just 17 years old, at a Cleveland-based internet service provider. It was 1998, and I had a deep admiration for the companies that were formed or hit stride during the early commercialization of the internet: names like Yahoo, eBay, Sun Microsystems, and Apple. Many of them seemed to be located in this one relatively tiny area of the country. Silicon Valley was hallowed ground to me, full of successes and failures, drama and activity.
SILICON VALLEY WAS HALLOWED GROUND TO ME, FULL OF SUCCESSES AND FAILURES, DRAMA AND ACTIVITY
Eventually the pull of Silicon Valley became too strong to resist: I moved to San Francisco in 2004 with only my computer and a few cardboard boxes. I worked remotely for a company based in New Jersey, and even then, being single, making a decent sum for a 23-year-old, and sharing an apartment with a newly met stranger, I quickly found out that the actual living costs add up if you’re not living under a rock. Trying to get a leg up on salary, I sent in some résumés to a few major companies, but the valley was in a recession at the time and I wasn’t even able to obtain an interview.
I relocated again to Arizona in 2005 at the suggestion of an Ohio friend who had settled in there. In the intervening five years, I adjusted nicely to the climate and scenery, found new work, and honed some of my system administration chops.
My first true taste of working for a Silicon Valley company came across in 2009 when I was hired by PayPal to be a part of its Scottsdale, Arizona, network operation center. At the time, I felt like even if this was as close as I got to working in Silicon Valley proper, my teenage self would still be proud.
Working at Facebook is like Disneyland for tech folk
There were plenty of considerations surrounding taking the Facebook offer. Could I survive in a place where almost everyone is imported top-tier talent? My doubts mounted as I remembered my first ill-fated run in San Francisco. I wasn’t looking forward to finding housing. I also had a 3-month-old daughter now and couldn’t afford to retreat in failure for a second time.
But I knew that if I didn’t take the job, I would always wonder what the ride would’ve been like. Behemoth companies don’t rise very often, and the prospect of being a part of one that was pre-IPO was exciting. After weighing the benefits and concerns with my wife, we decided to accept the offer for my dream job.
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