# 24 – #Exodus or #NoExodus – our most contentious episode, yet

Episode 24 ends our trilogy on Silicon Valley and our “no bs” contextualization: from its history, geography and its most common and core myths. 

In this episode, we deep dive on our Silicon Valley loves (and hates) and finally address the elephant in the room: is there an exodus going on or not? Has Silicon Valley’s downfall started or is it highly exaggerated? Listen to our most contentious podcast yet.

Navigation:

• Introduction (01:33)
• Section 1: Hates (02:19)
• Section 2: Loves (33:51)
• Section 3: The Future of Silicon Valley (54:41)
• Conclusion (1:13:09)

Our co-hosts:

• Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt
• Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro

Our show:
 
Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news

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Intro (01:34)

Nuno: So today in episode 24 of tech deciphered, we’ll be finalizing our trilogy on Silicon valley. Our non bullshit view on Silicon valley, which started in episode 22, talking about what Silicon valley is and what brought us here, then continues in episode 23, with an episode specifically on the mythology of Silicon valley and our sevent myths of Silicon valley.

And today we will end with love, hate – our areas of love and our areas  of hate of Silicon valley and the bay area. And we will finalize with Silicon valley in transition. Is there an Exodus? Is this a mindset? Is this a geography? What will happen to this region? Bertrand?

Section 1 – Hates (02:19)

Bertrand: Should we start with things we love or things we hate? 

Nuno: I started with hate let’s start with hate. And then we go to love. Yes.

Bertrand: Let’s start with hate. That sounds very very harsh, but there are some reasons to be harsh about Silicon valley, not everything is the paradise you can read from far.

Nuno: Yeah. So maybe starting with the most obvious of them all, with crime safety, homelessness, and here we have to be very specific because obviously there’s this situation for example, of San Francisco and crime and homelessness in San Francisco, which is pretty pervasive. And in some ways it’s been a little bit amped up also with COVID as a lot of people left town and certainly are working more remotely.

But definitely there is a problem in San Francisco. There’s a problem also elsewhere, Oakland, I think is having a little bit of what I would call a Renaissance. It’s getting and becoming an exciting city and and solving a lot of its issues. But obviously we know the history of crime in Oakland is also a very serious one.

And then you have places that have obviously no crime at all, like Atherton, the richest town in America or the wealthiest town in America where, finding crime is probably difficult. So really a tale of two bay areas, so to speak or to Silicon valleys  

Bertrand: Sorry let’s not forget east Palo Alto 

Nuno: Yeah.

You have these dichotomies exactly to your point Bertrand, where you have Palo Alto, which we know next to Stanford and where a lot of very wealthy people live like mark Zuckerberg and others which is in general, relatively safe here, and then just east Palo Alto, which is not as safe. 

Bertrand: The other side of the highway.

Nuno: literally the other side of the 1 0 1.

And so again, in some ways it’s a little bit quintessential American, right? We know that from other cities like Chicago and in LA and other parts of the U S where you have certain areas that have  for a variety of reasons a significant amount of lack of safety and crime and all of that.

And then you have areas that are extremely safe and extremely  controlled in terms of crime as well. So I think the first hate we probably both share, there is a feeling of being unsafe in certain areas here in San Francisco. There’s parts of the town where you walk through that,  depending on the time of day you’re moving through, et cetera, it does feel incredibly unsafe.

Both of us moved here from Beijing and, that’s definitely very different from Beijing.  And that’s clearly a big hate on my list.

Bertrand: Yes, Beijing is definitely safe. I still remember one of my trips to San Francisco before living here and taking naively a hotel just four blocks west of the center of San Francisco, Union square and ending up in the Tenderloin, not realizing that it will be full of homeless people, needles, feels very scary at night.

So that was a mistake. You don’t want to get a hotel in the Tenderloin.  For me, however, what has been amazing is that first it’s such a great, beautiful city, world city. Right in the middle or very close to the middle, you have such an area of   somewhat lawlessness, but  it feels like it has extended across the years to the rest of the city.

And that has been something pretty scary. I’ve heard stories, anecdotes of people I know very well,  very close to me who got mugged at gunpoint. I know people very close again who have been beaten so strongly in the street for no reason that they ended up a week at the hospital. And I’m talking about people you will not think they will get beaten by anyone. I’m talking about very big, very large people who ended up being beaten on the street for no good reason.  In the middle of downtown, in the good part of downtown in a way, quote on quote.  So there is a level of lawlessness that, at least when I arrived in 2014 was not there at least not beyond the Tenderloin and it feels that it has expanded.

And as you talk about COVID one thing that definitely shocked me when you had so few people in the streets of San Francisco: it was construction workers, and homeless people. So it was very weird because you were used in some ways to seeing 10% of, I don’t know, homeless people in the street 5% and suddenly jumping to 50%,  and obviously they were not wearing mask or anything.

Nuno:  The point on expansion, I think when COVID, as I mentioned with people moving around did amplify the areas of town where people were moving into. And also there were encampments and specific areas that were allocated for homeless people. So obviously there was a bit of a change in terms of the geography of it.

Homelessness in San Francisco has always been linked to a variety of things to drug abuse to mental issues, et cetera. But from what I know,  economic homelessness, so people that really don’t have the money to afford the home, et cetera, increased dramatically pre COVID.  I’m not sure where it is with COVID but it does feel in some ways that there are a lot of parts of town   where you wouldn’t see a lot of homeless people, and people that were without a home.

That those parts of town expanded quite a bit during COVID. We’ll see what happens in the future, this is not an anti homeless episode. It’s more like, it does feel at times, I think San Francisco is a particularly good example of that, that there’s a lot of crime, that’s you just wonder, how can one live and one of the in principle most prosperous areas of the world and deal with that complexity and deal with all of that.

And it’s not about eliminating and telling homeless people, they need to go away or drug addicted people or whatever. It’s more about how do you control crime in this type of environment.  And to a certain extent, it does feel unsafe. I do feel unsafe. So that’s our first, that’s our first one.

Bertrand:  we won’t solve this question 

Nuno: It’s a complex, it’s a complex question.  

Bertrand: but for sure it doesn’t feel right. For sure it’s a problem that just got worse, as you say, encampments, tents, that was not something you saw much in San Francisco in 2014 when I moved. It has totally exploded and there are a lot of metrics to back that  and it doesn’t fit connected in any rational way to what should be happening in this city.  And you know there are a lot of very weird stuff happening. For instance, I remember hearing that a lot of cities outside San Francisco are dropping the homeless in San Francisco. 

So I have heard stories about sheriffs or police cars from these cities dropping the homeless in San Francisco, because they will be taken care of quote-on-quote. You have a lot of subsidies that San Francisco is doing, spending money on homelessness that attracts people obviously and there are crazy metrics.

I remember one metric around the cost of homelessness in San Francisco. I think the city is spending $100K a year per homeless person. So basically they are spending more money on each homeless person than the average salary in San Francisco, which is probably around 80 K the average income of the San Franciscan.

So there are things that simply don’t make sense, and that are happening  in this city.

Nuno: There’s history behind it. so maybe to finalize this point, cause we don’t want to hamper too much on it. It is important to understand the history of San Francisco.  Everyone thinks San Francisco is by nature, a liberal city, a very liberal city. And in reality, it became a liberal city as a reaction to being a very conservative city.

There’s a great book called season of the witch by David Talbot which talks about that transition, but seen through the eyes of summer of love and the repercussions of that. But again, it’s a wonderful thing to look into, as you said and rightfully so Bertrand, we won’t solve it. I don’t think we understand enough about it to be able to solve it.

And many intelligent people have looked into it. But it’s definitely a big big hate 

Bertrand: Maybe to follow on some things that is a bit more specific to San Francisco versus the rest of the bay. It’s also all the issues with permitting and education for people who follow what’s happening in San Francisco. It’s a city where it’s incredibly complex to start any business. And I’m talking more about the small business type of business, not startups, but really if you want to open a restaurant, a coffee you’re opening can be delayed by months.

If not years, it’s very typical. The same if you want to build new housing, they keep saying that there is a housing problem in San Francisco. Yes, of course, because permitting is totally insane. Might take you 10 years to get a permit to build a new building. 

And on the education side, it has been crazy what has been happening under COVID.

The public school system was mostly totally broken not providing any service in person in San Francisco. And I think the rest of the Bay and California. they just focus on some crazy stuff in San Francisco, like for instance, just renaming the schools in the middle of the pandemic, not bringing kids to school again, they were focused on renaming schools.

So there is some part that is really scary and broken.  And talking about schools in San Francisco, you have to know that it’s a lottery system. So you don’t get the school allocated based on where you live. You just get school allocated  on a lottery system, which of course could mean that you have to bring your kids to a school on the other side of the city.

And guess what, that’s the  city with the least proportion of kids per capita in the US as a result of a lot of issues with how schools are run.

Nuno: But then you have the opposite issue, which is what I call the Menlo park Palo Alto divide. You know why Menlo park was always cheaper in terms of housing, even sometimes across the street than Palo Alto was. At the height of it it’s like 30% cheaper house from one side of the street to the other, because of school districts, because people want it to be in Palo Alto to get access to the better school district at that point in time.

I do think things have changed since then. And obviously there’s also private schools on top of public schooling, But a lot of also the economics of the valley, as opposed to San Francisco, where it’s a lottery system, were driven by the schools you could get your kids going into. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with nonprofits on the board of nonprofits, around education in California, and here in the bay area, initially with partnership for children, youth, and now with one goal for the bay area, there was a lot of funky things going on, which for European person might not make a lot of sense on how, for example, the school district organizations work, how PDA works, how the parent teacher association works and their importance and involvement, but there’s a really funky thing.

I don’t have kids, obviously Bertrand you have a daughter, but the interesting thing is even in public schools, let’s forget private schools for a second. You are highly incentivized. I am even gonna say pushed, in many cases to contribute to the school with money, right. and with assets 

Bertrand: With money and time. 

Nuno: I was hearing stories that are just mind-boggling. I won’t say the name of the school. It was a public school. And the teacher had an offer to go literally to go and move to another school, which in this case was a private school, I guess she was going to be paid more for that and some of the parents come together and offered her like an Hermes bag or whatever to stay. it’s just, it’s mind blowing stuff, it’s just, the system clearly has all these issues. 

And back to your point around permitting and services and education, a lot of teachers and a lot of workers in restaurants and chefs sometimes they can’t afford to live in the place where they have the business, right? Where they you know do their service? And that means they have to commute. And that means they have, incredibly complex commutes. I remember this is the most salient story to me. I was once in a Starbucks, I think probably in Los Altos, which is a decently affluent area and a table next to me, I couldn’t help it overhear a lady that was interviewing another lady for a position of, I think I would classify it as a grownup nanny. So someone took care of some kids who were maybe in their teens and one of the core questions, and she asked this question like two or three times in different ways, that’s the person who was interviewing asked was where do you live? Are you going to make sure that you’re going to come here? Because the person that was doing this before at certain point in time, the commute was so long, they gave up, and finally I realized that this person that was being interviewed was an hour to an hour and a half each way of traffic to get there.

So we’re talking about a two, three hour commute that she would need to do. I think it was four days a week or something. And you’re like, it’s just,  so there’s also this mentality somehow that then when you have a lot of affluence, you have a lot of people that have a lot of money that can afford to have certain means of service to them.

And there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. But when that intrinsic service is propelled to areas that are geographically very distance, which is the case in the bay area,  it becomes like a system that’s it’s very incomprehensible right. And if you’re talking about Asia and if you’re talking about Europe it’s basically within the context of a city and here it’s in the context of different cities and different towns.

And  it is mind-boggling to me. 

Bertrand: But at the same time, having lived in Beijing. Most of our engineering, they had a commute, one hour to one hour and a half. 

Nuno: but they’re commuting within the city. It’s not like I’m getting on a car 

Bertrand: There is public transportation in Beijing, and there is public transportation in Europe because I was going to say, Paris is the same. Maybe not as extreme 90 minutes, but definitely one hour plus is definitely happening and is typical. But you have public transportation. 

Here you have a very poor public transportation, you have to drive a car in many cases, so that’s an issue. And maybe another point, this one is not just the Bay, but just in general, California. And some other states in the US one thing that is scary is that they try to remove  competition at every level of the education system.

Removing the SAT exam at the entrance of universities. It’s removing gifted programs all over the state. It’s removing a math curriculum when you are in high school or middle school. It’s becoming pretty crazy for a country that is already super bad in term of STEM. Stem, meaning math science engineering type of programs and curriculum.  They are going to destroy it even more at every level of the education system.

So I’m hopeful at some point it will go back in it’s track, but it’s really scary from my perspective, and this is strong in California, but it’s happening in many states, all over the US.

Nuno: But then you have, again, like the other side, and this is the interesting piece of this, right? So you have, for all these dysfunctions, like in  public schools, et cetera, then you have some of the best preparatory, schools, high schools in the U S here as well. You have Nueva, which is for gifted kids, right?

You have Harker, Palo Alto high school is an amazing school. It’s this dichotomy that you systematically see and sometimes even within the same sub region.  

Bertrand: Yeah, private schools have a bit more control on their curriculum. That’s for sure. But I can see that in California state and now Washington state they are removing all public gifted programs from public schools, which is pretty scary because it means that if you want that, you have to go private, you have to spend even more money.

It’s even less accessible. All of this in some weird spirit of making things more accessible 

Nuno: And sort of the after school, the after-school out of school  support is really not taken for granted. And it’s been a big fight for example, of partnership for children youth of which I used to be a board member. And it’s just very complex, to make it work in public school districts and how to scale it.

Maybe moving to another hate it, we’re spending quite a lot of time on our hates, but moving to another hate obviously cost of living, the taxes, everything that you pay for. When I first moved to California, I was like, this place is, seems relatively cheap. And then you start realizing, yeah, but  you need to pay for this, and you need to pay for that. You need to pay for your garbage collection. The prices of energy are pretty silly and then taking into account that you pay a lot for your electricity and then you have brownouts and you can have, like I did in half moon bay I think it was almost two days without electricity, right?

When we have the famous PG&E debacle, so to speak, and you’re like, I’m paying all this money and I’m getting, effectively worse service and electricity than I would get in a certainly emerging market country. It’s incredible. Everything costs everything’s expensive. It’s not cheap.

It’s really a lot of people that I hear, entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs are like, I’m going to go to the bay area and I’m going to move there. And I’m like, have you looked at how much it’s going to cost you to live there? Have you looked at how much it would cost you even flat sharing in terms of rent.

Have you looked at how much you’re going to pay for this and this, which you take for granted in your own home country. People sometimes just don’t do that. They don’t do that analysis. They don’t think through that.

Bertrand: I mean as you know, San Fransisco at least before COVID used to be considered the most expensive city in America, if not the world. And this price point is being reflected in the valley as well. So it’s extremely expensive. And when you add the taxes that are the most expensive in the U S with New York state and New York city it’s a very bad deal.

You might have what looks like a big salary, but so much is going away in your taxes, federal taxes, plus local state tax. And then you have to pay very expensive housing. And then all the services are very expensive. If you go out to restaurants to pay for food delivery, this is very expensive service at every level of the chain. I mean your $6 coffee. So it’s very expensive to live and it’s by far with probably New York city the most expensive city to live in America today.

Nuno: And just to frame this with examples that some of our listeners might not fully understand because the realities are different around the world. For example, to get internet access, I have a hundred megabits per second, where I live, I really have the most basic TV package because they forced me to have a TV package, but like the most basic it’s not even HD.

And I pay around $120 a month, $120 a month. If we’re talking about, for example, the situation in terms of costs that we were talking housing, if you’re talking about a house in the valley, in the heart of Silicon valley, and you say a million dollars, nobody will blink. People wouldn’t even say anything.

It’s okay. A million is okay, fair.  Thanks. So that’s like the starting point, right? 

Bertrand: to be clear, you don’t have a good house for a million dollar in Silicon Valley. 

Nuno: For a million dollars, you don’t have a very good house. Just to be clear. 

Bertrand: No offense to anyone, but it’s not going to be nice.

Nuno: Not at all. 

Not at all. 

No, people like you know, San Francisco an apartment, apartments at a million, also people, many people wouldn’t blink.

So we’re talking about that order of magnitude in terms of just sheer costs that you have to withstand  and that you have to deal with. We will come to the loves in a bit, but there is definitely a love on cars where obviously taxes in the us on cars and stuff are pretty low.

So the cars are cheap  but apart from that, housing is super expensive. You have all these hidden things that you don’t really understand until you buy a house or you’re buying your first house, like HOAs, where you have to contribute to your neighborhood and the maintenance of it.

Forgetting the licensing issues and all of that stuff that comes on top of it, basic things like you   Bertrand we’re talking about the taxes and state tax and all of that, there’s taxes then at county level and then there’s taxes also at town level, right. San Francisco has more tax than whatever’s around it. And San Francisco is a county.

But for example, I live in half moon bay, which belongs to San Mateo county. We have additional sales tax on top of San Mateo county because we are incorporated town and we have an additional it’s small, but an additional sales tax. So if I buy a car and my address is half moon bay, I pay a little bit more for my car because I have an increased sales tax because I live in half moon bay.

You’re like really? Why?

Because someone needs to make money revenue, someone needs to make stuff to maintain their town. Their part of the world, their little neighborhood,

Bertrand: Yeah the US is a unique patchwork of small jurisdictions. You have your city tax, you have your county tax, you have your state tax, you have your federal tax and all of this of course add up.  Going back to California, believe it’s one of the most expensive state in term of gas taxes. it’s still not bad versus Europe or Asia. But it’s one of the most expensive state. Going back to your internet access I’m going to make envious, but here in Washington state, I’ve got a Centurylink and I managed to get gigabit fiber. So gigabit both ways for just $65 a month. So that’s was one of the nice things of moving out of California. 

Nuno: Okay. I’m depressed now. Yeah.

And a good segue to this as you pay a lot of taxes and people like of course, and you have great infrastructure. And as we discussed in our first episode,  we don’t, and it’s worse than that, then there’s other issues. And now there’s a discussion whether this is, the fault of federal or the fault of the state.

And there’s a lot of debate around that. But obviously as you guys know, even globally, we have fires every year, it’s getting worse. It’s getting more out of control. So even really basic infrastructure maintenance where you’re trying to safeguard your populations, where you’re making sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen it’s very tricky.

I wouldn’t say it’s in the heart of Silicon valley, but certainly in north bay or further into north bay,  we had all these debacles  cities being destroyed and people dying with fires and you can’t help, but wonder. Really, is there no absolute control over what things we can do and how we manage this? anyway, very sad situation, but definitely something to think about.

Bertrand: And for the few people that are staying in silicon valley hearing that some are now saying they want to be out during the fire season, meaning from what July to October. So I’m hearing more and more people are now planning things that way for the coming fire season.

Nuno: I was talking to a friend of mine who moved back to New York. And I was saying, I’m thinking of going to Portugal for work. And obviously connecting with my friends and family as well, late September, October. And she was like, of course you’re avoiding fire season. I was like, sorry. So it’s becoming a thing now.

It’s yeah, fire season. I’m not here. I’m going to go somewhere else. The good news is we now have masks. We have masks. We have filters because of COVID. So we’re like, we’re ready now and more ready than we’ve ever been.

Bertrand: Having lived in China for six years, where  you used to have some of the worst pollution levels in the world, I can say I was not even prepared for how bad we got it in Silicon valley in September: to see an orange, fully orange sky for a full day. A day that was so dark. At the same time you had a heatwave of 40, 42 degrees, no air conditioning, because you are close to SF.

Usually it’s not too hot. It was horrible. It was a total nightmare scenario. It was bad. That’s one of the reasons ended up deciding moving.  It was just too much at some point on how you have to organize your life. And especially as we just said, in exchange of spending so much in term of taxes and cost of living.

And that’s a big question. I think people are ready to spend money in tax and cost of living if they get some true value in exchange for opportunities on that used to be the case. But I think that has changed quite a bit over time.  

And going back and going to infrastructure. We’ve got utilities, electricity that’s connected to fire because the moment you need them, actually that’s when they’re cutting electricity under your feet for hours or days at a time. You experienced 2 days. I know people who experienced a week without electricity. This is insane. Go to Asia, go to Europe, experiencing days without electricity in the middle of one of your  biggest, most important economically region. It’s just unheard of. Absolutely unheard of.  I don’t know if you have heard like me, but I was surprised. And also here in Washington state, so many people have generators.

They have electricity generators. In my neighborhood, we’re talking about 15% of people have generators. 15%.

Have you ever heard that in Asia or Europe? No.  so that’s pretty surprising. And maybe on the infrastructure part, we talk about the cost of maintaining roads.   The highest cost in the world in term of road maintenance. But in return you still get potholes. It is in a very climate friendly environment.

We are talking about a Mediterranean style of climate. This is California. This is not extreme weather causing terrible damage to the infrastructure all year long. This is not the case. So this is really surprising. And the other side of it is there is very little public transportation.

Yes there is BART to transport inside San Francisco. There is MUNI,  there is CALtrain, but this is a joke compared to any public transportation system, for an area of 8 million people. If you look at the whole bay area, this is a total joke. So as a result, traffic jams are insane in the region. During COVID, it was less an issue to be frank, but hopefully when we come back in person, it won’t go back to the old ways. Hopefully people work more remotely. We will see, but that used to be very bad.

Nuno: I would add well, the the traffic jams are back just to give you the, the pointer on that. 

Bertrand: And I’m sure people are even more worried to use public transportation with a virus and a pandemic going around.

So all taking their cars. 

Nuno: I would say just to close on that point, that at least we’re not LA, I spent a week in LA and I was like, this is the worst of the bay area all the time, literally. I mean, so at least we’re not LA, so we’re still happier than our Southern neighbors here in that sense. 

Talking maybe a little bit about culture and access to arts and access to things.

We, we do have some interesting things, obviously SF opera. We have  the symphony, we have great museums, like the museum of Modern Art is amazing. De Young museum is great. So we do have amazing places from a, from an art standpoint, but sometimes it does feel a little bit like a regional town I think in some ways it’s not London, it’s not New York, it’s not Paris.

So it’s not one of these top five cities in the world, top six cities in the world. Maybe our bar is a bit too high 

Bertrand: That’s the most expensive place to live in the world. So I think bar should be the highest.  

Nuno: And it is still secondary, right? People come here after they’ve been to New York and after they’ve been to London  like artists.

I would say it’s not a big hate issue for me, but it does feel sometimes a little bit regional,

Bertrand: It’s regional. 

Nuno: Versus other places. 

Bertrand: But I know people who left because of that reason.

Nuno: And then last but not least of our hates. And I think we’ll have different angles of entry on this. It’s maybe too PC this area too politically correct. And I don’t mean this in a hard way. It’s not the notion of, we should say whatever goes in our mind and not be penalized for it or not respect other people.

it’s a little bit more nuanced, which is sometimes you have to be this type of person to fit in the bay area. And that generates drones, that generates people that are all the same. And sometimes the real discussion then doesn’t happen because people are almost afraid of sharing their points of view and using sometimes even the wrong words.

And I remember being told off by someone, I won’t say who it was, but someone I respected quite a lot. When I first came to the bay area, cause I was mentioning, there was the person at reception at the office that we were in, and I may have mentioned the girl at reception and the person took offense to it.

And I was like, it is a girl she’s quite young. And she is at reception. And if it was a guy, I would say, it’s the guy at reception. And it’s no, but you’re. And so I was like what should I say? It was like the receptionist or the person at reception, or sometimes it’s just, you’re like, oh man.

I understand that we need to be respectful and that we need to understand different choices and that we need to understand a bunch of other things, but it’s like really I remember south park did a full season on PC when PC principal was introduced on political correctness.

And obviously these guys are based in LA, but I was like, this is so San Francisco.   I understand there’s discussions that need to happen and there’s ways to manifest change. And in some ways change is needed. As we said, there’s a lot of issues, but then the discussion doesn’t happen because  everyone’s very afraid of saying the wrong thing of expressing themselves in the wrong way.

And I feel in some ways that takes away from the actual authenticity of the conversation. And in many cases, it doesn’t lead to meaningful and sustainable impact and change.

And it’s a loss because you have a lot of bright and intelligent people here, and every time in the news, oh, this guy wrote me this stupid email and this person tried to express themselves in this way.

And sometimes it is out of line  I’ll acknowledge it. Sometimes there are things that happen that are out of line, but sometimes you do need to have the discussion. You do need to have different points of view and people expressing that they have an easiness around certain aspects of this culture that maybe need to be revisited or maybe need to be evaluated

Bertrand: Yeah. Where I am worried is that when you go too far, in a way it’s trivializing the real problems, the real issues. And there are some real issues that might happen in a company environment, or outside a company environment that are important and that you want to be taken care of. But if you end up spending your time policing 50, 75%  that’s not so important, that’s not such a big difference. That’s not too much an issue. As long as you have a minimum of a skin to protect yourself.

That’s trouble that’s not the right way. And as you say, the big issue is that a lot of people don’t dare to speak. And that’s probably one reason a lot of people are leaving the bay is because they are here, but they don’t enjoy truly being here because they don’t feel they’re actually respected with their opinion, because there are a lot of opinions you cannot voice anymore.

And I feel, people talk about China, about censorship and a lot of this stuff. Yes, it’s true. It’s definitely there. But I have personally felt on a daily basis more need to censor myself,  others, in Silicon valley than in China. And that might surprise people or shock some people, but that’s the reality.

You have to be extremely careful of what you say, a single world here can destroy your career, even if it was a joke, even if it was a mistake, even if there was  nothing, no bad intent whatsoever. You might not have been aware of the latest etiquette on how you should talk to this person or using the wrong pronouns.

This is becoming very crazy. It feels like a place that don’t have real problems, but try to find new problem, or. is trying to hide its real problems. Because we talk about some real problems,  by talking constantly about some other problems. 

I would say it’s pretty bad. If you think America is a lot about being politically correct? actually, San Francisco is probably the epicenter of all this phenomenon of political correctness in America. And personally, for instance, that’s one thing I like in New York you feel people are a bit more in your face.

Don’t hesitate to be quite frank about their opinion. And this is a bit more fun in a way to be in New York, live in New York, from that perspective, versus San Francisco,

Nuno: So again, advice, if you are someone who is thick skinned who likes, push debate, aggressiveness, at least confrontation of points, even in a respectful manner, this sometimes will not be the right place for you. It will be a difficult place. It will be a difficult place to have really discussions at scale which is shocking, right?

Because again, so much intellect and so much so much skills are here that it’s really surprising.

Bertrand: You might have this discussion on technical or purely business matters, but anything beyond that can be very dangerous.

Nuno: Anytime you go into sociological issues, spiritual, religious issues, gender issues, sexually related issues. Tough. It’s going to be very tough to have those conversations. You can have it with a small group of friends or with very close friends, I would actually say, but anytime you go beyond that to a different type of environment, a larger scale environment, you’re gonna really struggle.

Section 2 –  Loves (33:51)

But let’s talk maybe about what we love here, cause there’s stuff to be loved here.

Bertrand: What we love here. So when it’s not on fire, climate is fantastic.  It’s a Mediterranean climate. It’s very enjoyable most of the year. You have a small winter what from December to February where it’s raining more.    but except for that time and the fire season now it’s a very enjoyable climate.

Just to be clear. There are a lot of micro-climates in the Bay, so I’m not talking about terrible weather in San Francisco. I’m talking about a bit nicer weather across the bay and overall California, especially Southern California, where it can be very enjoyable.

Nuno: I would say I live in Half Moon Bay, which has very similar weather to San Francisco. And just to defend the weather in half moon bay and San Francisco, we have great weather year round with a very disappointing summer. That’s how I normally position it where you’d expect heat and sometimes you get cold and it’s very confusing.

But then I could be, and this has actually happened to me Christmas day outside t-shirt because it’s moderate weather. And it’s nice. The valley itself, because it’s next to the bay. It’s a little bit more protected by the mountains unlike San Francisco does have a much nicer summer, much warmer.

I spent a summer at Stanford studying and, it’s gorgeous maybe a bit too warm at times, but it’s gorgeous. San Francisco and places like half moon bay, which have, as I said, a more moderate weather that in summer, bit cooler, a bit too cool just to be honest.

We didn’t compensate with Indian summer, we have Indian summer in September into October, and it’s incredible. So yeah.

Bertrand: Just to remind audiences there is a saying, I believe from Mark Twain  

Nuno: it’s hoax it’s attributed to Mac Twain, but it’s not Mark Twain 

Bertrand: HIs worst winter was a summer in San Francisco. 

Nuno: It must have been someone else that said that, but it was not mark Twain.  Someone important. But it is truly it’s a bit cool. I come from Lisbon originally and the way I position it is in, in a city like Lisbon, the trade-off is winter.

Winter is a bit wet and it’s not super cold, but it’s a bit cold. It’s not great. And the equivalent to that in the bay area sorry, the equivalent to that in San Francisco. And again, in half moon bay and places like that is summer is a bit too cool for what it should be, but then we get our revenge in winter, right and I often drive my car with a top-down in winter.

One thing everyone says, oh, in California should have a convertible. It’s actually, yeah, around this area, you probably should have a converter because you’re going to spend maybe even more than half of the days of the year with your top-down  that’s how incredible the weather can be from being a moderate weather.

Maybe adding to that sort of the great outdoors the amazing national parks, the amazing state parks the ocean, this is quintessential California. and I would say, it’s green on certain parts. It’s a little bit more arid than others. It’s just incredible. It is truly beautiful, truly gorgeous.

I think the climate plus this is often disregarded a lot of people when they talk about exodus vs, non exodus is, and people are leaving because it’s very expensive and whatever they forget this really basic thing, this is a wonderful piece of geography where people want to live, because it is actually gorgeous because it is actually rincredible that you can go and take a walk and go to the Redwood trees and you can drive a little bit and be in Tahoe and do skiing and you can go to the beach and enjoy a wonderful beach.

it’s just it, this is the postcard of California in some ways. I think between here San Diego, LA, but certainly here, I think we have very diverse set of conditions where you do have the green and the brown and the arid stuff all together. and then the mountains with ice.

It’s wonderful to live here. 

Bertrand: You have national parks like Yosemite, so it’s really amazing all the nature y