I am not a Bay Area native (being from Los Angeles) and with that, I think it is fair to say I have an easier time noticing the different quirks that software engineers in Silicon Valley possess especially in comparison to non-engineers in Southern Californian.
First and foremost, my experience is that most people that live here are very goal and work-oriented. Their entire lives revolve around their careers and not the other way around. For example, most businesses begin to pick up customers on the weekday around 5pm-7 pm which is the time most engineers just get off from work, but right after those hours at many places it virtually becomes a ghost town. However, in Los Angeles, it seems that individuals here do not care as much when to sleep because their work or jobs in comparison to tech does not have that more structured 9am-5 pm work hours such as in Los Angeles. Also, in my experience of hanging out with others during these 5pm-7pm prime hours for dinner, for example, we always talk about work or our next move/interview. It is almost like dinner with your friends become a cross-company standup so that you can vent your achievements and also frustrations with buggy code or learning a new project. This is great since it gives us insight into coding practices in other tech companies as a whole and specific teams utilizing certain technologies. A common occurrence I seem to encounter is that these friendly cross-company standups I like to call them give inspiration in having others think about joining other companies either because of higher compensation, better company, or both.
To conclude this blog post, I will list a couple of more light-hearted aspects that are a bit on the more comical side. Living here for about 7 months now I am very convinced it is a truth that most software engineers in the Bay Area own a Corgi, Tesla, loves boba/coffee, and cannot afford to own a home. Just some observation that I thought to throw out there! But switching back to a serious note, I want to discuss the great advantages of living in this “Silicon Valley stereotypical environment” and how it relates to the previous blog post where I talked about emulating the great traits of senior engineers. In addition, as mentioned above, living in this type of stereotypical tech environment gives you the extra opportunity of emulating your friend engineers as well in your personal life, which is double the advantage!
