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I also disliked NorCal weather. Too much endless sun made me angry. Being a broke ass student also made me angry.

Taking the bart made me angry.

The food made me angry.

I couldn’t leave it fast enough. Palo Alto was full of insufferable trust fund douches or nepotism so ripe it could have started an imperial dynasty

Quote:

Originally Posted by RabidRat (Post 9141066)

I was pretty torn up about it in the months leading up to leaving - I'd lived there for 9 years - but it helps that Toronto's such a great place to be.

I lived in the SF South Bay Area, aka Silicon Valley. It's about 40 minutes south of SF, and the environment is mostly tech campuses in a collection of small towns. E.g. Cupertino, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Redwood City: each of their downtowns were maybe the size of Kerrisdale, and each of them are about 10-15 minutes of driving down the highway. Never too far from the mountains and Pacific Coast, where a good drive or ride could be had on the weekends or after work.

And the access to world class tracks!! Sonoma (Infineon) is an hour north. Thunderhill is another hour up. Laguna Seca is 2 hours south. Buttonwillow another hour down. Between my S2k, R6, and R56 Cooper S, I'd been to 25+ track days.

It was also great to be within an hour's flight to LA (we used to drive there, but it really wasn't worth burning up a whole 5 hours each way for just a weekend). The food there is great, and there the beaches and warmth are really California as advertised.

I liked it but I missed living in a bigger city. I suppose I could've gotten that living in San Francisco: some of my colleagues took the company shuttle to and from every day. But SF's a little grungy these days, esp after COVID.

I also got kind of sick of the continuous sunny blue skies. When every day is the same, it all just kind of blurs together. You're less grateful. It doesn't feel special. I missed the seasonality of Vancouver. I missed the rain, I missed the snow.

But the work life: wow. For engineering, it is the major leagues. You get really good at what you do, because you work with the best, they expect the best, and the challenges are numerous and fun. You patent. And you get access to work on some truly bat-shit crazy stuff that only SV has the resources to fund. The pay is pretty ok too: you look around in the parking garage and it seems like 911 Carreras are rare to see, only because there are so many GT3s lol.

Anyway in the end, I moved for family. It's kind of hard to let go of the work responsibilities to really be present for your kids (my colleagues try, to varying degrees of success. it takes a lot of willpower to drop what you're doing and skip out on stuff, when you know it's going to let people down). Also my wife's family is all here and we wanted the kid to be among family. She also has a career that she loves here and we feel like it's her turn to see how far she can go. So when I finally shipped the hardware I was working on for so many years, we figured it was time to go.

P.S.: Silicon Valley the show is way exaggerated, but it has some basis in truth :D:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-b7-fLOjlY

That's an interesting post. Couple things that stood out for me.

You can get too much sunny weather it seems. When in San Diego, I was getting a coffee and chatting with the barista. I was telling her how much I love SD, she told me she would love to move to a place like Vancouver because she's a little tired of all the sunny weather. She'd like to see rain, and snow. Wife said the same thing about someone she was chatting with at the Children's Museum as well. I've never hated the rainy weather in Vancouver like some other ppl do but never thought you can have too much sunny.

The one thing that I can't give up though is the greenery. I really learned to appreciate it when I went to Phoenix for 5 days for a bachelor party. Phoenix was a lot of fun, but the first thing that hit me was that everything was brown or tan. When we flew back and arrived in Seattle, it just hit me how everything was dark green. I do not want to give that up which means chances are I am stuck in the PNW and the temperate rainforest climate.

With work. I do want to try working at a place where everyone is capable, and there's competent management. I've come close at the crypto company that I joined in 2022, but unfortunately my manager there was a micromanaging newbie, which then everyone got laid off at the crypto crash.

Though, I've interviewed ppl from SF and LA. The ones that I've interviewed don't seem particularly great and we came out of those interviews thinking, "that person works at Apple how? did they just got brought in from acquiring another company?"

During my time in NorCal... the rule of thumb was always bring a jacket in the car. The place gets cold as soon as the sun goes out either because of a cloudy day or night time.

Other than that, I love NorCal overall.
If it wasn't for the crazy tax scheme in California, we'd probably move there after wife's work at the university was done.

Heck, I even love dealing with the hippie liberal Chinese IT people over there. They are the craziest, most condescending and yet contradicting people you can find on Earth. Whenever they tell me things like Trans should be able to go to whatever changeroom they feel like. I'd go, "oh... so you agree that it's ok for me to say Taiwan is not China". They'd go batshit crazy saying "Taiwan is China and it's got nothing to do". I was like, hey, that's discrimination. I identify myself as Taiwanese and I should be able to say whatever the fuck I believe in. :fuckthatshit: And that'd usually crash their brain as they aren't able to process that logic and it goes into infinite loop.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Badhobz (Post 9141074)

Ya man Stanford is a rich kids' school in a rich peoples' town. Can only imagine what that would've been like for a kid from the east side having just clawed their way in.

For what it's worth, glad you didn't wind up a VC douche. Seems like a very different world than the one I lived out there, which was among mostly self-made dorks with humble roots who got in because they passed the 6-hour white-boarding interview marathon of circuit design and/or coding.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvoFire (Post 9141084)

Though, I've interviewed ppl from SF and LA. The ones that I've interviewed don't seem particularly great and we came out of those interviews thinking, "that person works at Apple how? did they just got brought in from acquiring another company?"

Yeah true. Folks do sometimes seem to slip through the cracks. I've interviewed EEs coming in from places like NASA JPL, Dyson, degrees from MIT, CalTech, and it's like wtf, how are you this bad? I don't even look at resumes anymore before I interview. Just seems like it shouldn't matter and I'd rather not be biased.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hehe (Post 9141085)

Heck, I even love dealing with the hippie liberal Chinese IT people over there. They are the craziest, most condescending and yet contradicting people you can find on Earth. Whenever they tell me things like Trans should be able to go to whatever changeroom they feel like. I'd go, "oh... so you agree that it's ok for me to say Taiwan is not China". They'd go batshit crazy saying "Taiwan is China and it's got nothing to do". I was like, hey, that's discrimination. I identify myself as Taiwanese and I should be able to say whatever the fuck I believe in. :fuckthatshit: And that'd usually crash their brain as they aren't able to process that logic and it goes into infinite loop.

Sounds like indoctrination vs rational cognition. Different parts of the brain, I guess!

What ?!?!? Taiwan is China !!!! (Literally… the old Chinese government) :pokerface:

Fuck you hehaw you separatist dog!

Can I have semiconductors now ?

Also welcome back. Haven’t seen your posts in a while

Norcal gets pretty chilly for california standards in the winter. Also if you want seasonality you can always go to lake tahoe. Let’s revisit this thread after rabidrat goes through a east coast winter lol

The perfect address doesn't exist........... :pokerface::lawl:

https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/2...ew-westminster

lol I was gonna say let's gofundme so Mike can get it.

I'm surprised the woke folks and SJWs haven't protested the hell out of that street name yet. Yonge-Dundas Square is already a goner.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Traum (Post 9141135)

I'm surprised the woke folks and SJWs haven't protested the hell out of that street name yet. Yonge-Dundas Square is already a goner.

The people who care about that kind of shit can't even afford a basement suite in that area

Quote:

Originally Posted by noclue (Post 9141118)

No man, I've lived in Toronto before! I was here a couple years before heading to California :)

The first year I was here, it went below -20C, and it got so dry my hands looked like Emperor Palpatine's face: cracked and fissuring blood all over. Worth it!! I fucking love snow, and I love driving in it even more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RabidRat (Post 9141066)

But the work life: wow. For engineering, it is the major leagues. You get really good at what you do, because you work with the best, they expect the best, and the challenges are numerous and fun. You patent. And you get access to work on some truly bat-shit crazy stuff that only SV has the resources to fund. The pay is pretty ok too: you look around in the parking garage and it seems like 911 Carreras are rare to see, only because there are so many GT3s lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvoFire (Post 9141084)

My general experience with Valley (and Seattle tech) workers is that the top tier (~10%) is truly top tier and those folks don't go around applying for Vancouver jobs ever unless some serious life event is happening to them that's forcing them to Vancouver. After that the rest of the people in those jobs are just people like us. Getting to work with the top tier folks is a very memorable experience.

But the elite are elite in big American cities and they're paid accordingly. I attend exec level events fairly regularly in SF and most folks are just like me (except they chose to be in SF where the action is) but there's the 1% that I know there's no hope I'll ever come close to being as good as. They're way smarter than me and they've experienced things I've never experienced at work. They're also WAY richer than me.

The only place in Cali I've gotten to work is San Leandro lol. I'll still take it over most of the other states I've been to.

I really enjoyed lane splitting down in cali….. and el pollo loco. And the tacos.

Asian baby girls weren’t too bad either although far and few in Palo Alto. Most are the nerdy librarian type or the trust fund kids

I thought people in tech were moving to Texas or Miami due to the taxes and the California laws

I would dream to live on Blackman street, the jokes would write themselves.

My GF hates that our wifi name is Black Mandingo. It gets kinda embarrassing whenever help desk has to RDC into my laptop to fix some VPN issues, first thing they do is click on my network and go "uhhhhhh....".

I'm gonna get fired one day.

Eh could be worse. Living on gay road with blowcock intersection in Richmond
https://i.postimg.cc/7LTKn0j2/7a2545...b-Original.jpg

https://maps.app.goo.gl/CKhgUhDZkNWK171u8

I took this picture a few years back when we saw a house on gay road. The directions the realtor gave were just absolutely hilarious

"Go blowcock till you hit gay road, then turn right and you'll see a pink house"

Texas?...... "Texas is for steers and queers"

Browsing Zealty for homes under $1.5m with 4 bedrooms that are under 10 years and these are the cities that don't have a single unit available:

- Richmond
- Coquitlam
- Poco
- Port Moody
- Ladner
- Pitt Meadows (!!!)
- Burnaby
- Vancouver

Langley has 3 houses that fit the criteria but you otherwise have to go out to Maple Ridge to find anything.

OTOH, I can move to Langford for the same money and get 3000sf in a new build for the same money: https://www.rew.ca/properties/590740...erty_click=map

(I'm visiting Victoria this weekend and, once again, loving how nice it is there with me wishing I could live thereabouts)

Welcome to Chilliwack baby

best address is anything in delta with the V4G 1NA postal code.

Wow, you aren't kidding either! Google Maps

Quote:

Originally Posted by supafamous (Post 9141237)

Lots of duplex in Vancouver with that criteria

https://www.zealty.ca/mls-R2892555/2...-Vancouver-BC/