<story><title>DHH: Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco?</title><url>http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/987-are-you-sure-you-want-to-be-in-san-francisco</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rob</author><text>I think people are too focused on the logistics of &quot;startups&quot; and getting investors instead of actually creating websites that make money.&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is, there are tons of individuals across the country that make thousands of dollars a month creating websites &lt;i&gt;themselves&lt;/i&gt;. They don&apos;t seek funding, they either hire a designer/programmer or do it themselves. They don&apos;t have a beta, they launch whatever they they are making. They don&apos;t have one obscure idea that they think they need to go out and pay $5,000 to form an official company for, but instead have a couple of useful websites that generate money. If they start to make a lot of money, then they&apos;ll open a LLC for tax benefits.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, I&apos;d bet a majority of them have no computer science degree or the knowledge that the hackers here do, which means anyone here can make as much as them since they won&apos;t need to pay for programmers.</text></comment>
<story><title>DHH: Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco?</title><url>http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/987-are-you-sure-you-want-to-be-in-san-francisco</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>geebee</author><text>San Francisco is an interesting place.  I live in SF, and I know a lot of programmers (and other tech workers) who live in SF, but I doubt that more than a third of them actually work in SF proper.  Most of us engage in long and soul destroying drives to sterile office buildings in the midst of pedestrian-unfriendly parking lots on the peninsula and in the south bay.  And we pay &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; for the privilege.&lt;p&gt;I think that other cities, like Portland, Seattle, Austin in the US (and maybe Barcelona, Copenhagen internationally) might actually be better places to work.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t leave SF, but I grew up here and have family around.  If I were starting out, I&apos;d definitely consider other cities.</text></comment>