While the biggest names may be downsizing or reshaping or whatever euphemism you prefer, there are many more tech companies in the Bay, who may have different situations.
As someone who used to live in the Bay, and is considering returning (had to move for family health reasons) I’d love to understand where we’re currently at.
So some specific questions then:
How many tech jobs are still exclusive to the bay, vs being targeted towards folks who are remote across the country / world?
Does this differ based on roles like software engineering vs more people oriented roles like Product / UX / Sales / Marketing?
How many people are going back to the office? How many are still in the bay, but just working from home? Of that latter, how many would be free to leave and work from any other state as they please?
Most of my friends left the bay, for a wide variety or reasons. I haven’t heard of anyone moving back. But on the other hand, I cant imagine the bay ever not being the epicenter of tech, growth, and innovation? Where do we actually stand?
A few mega corps are doing 10% RiF (AMZN, MSFT, etc). A few are drastically reducing their expenses because their business model never was profitable without VC investment (Twitter, DoorDash, Peloton).
But lots of smaller-than-the-largest companies still have massive numbers of open reqs for roles which align with their growth strategies.
[caveat] I’m not sure that most open reqs are actually jobs waiting for employees. I think there are a few reasons why companies wouldn’t fill all of them, even if they found great candidates to fill them.
I found this gem of a Google Doc which aggregates open reqs by VC investment (note this isn’t SF specific but VC investments are highly correlated with the few major tech hubs, of which SF is one): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JxUyrHAmB6xbIEbLfQcA...
My personal anecdata is that my startup (7 years old / cybersecurity sector) continues to hire in engineering + product in South Bay and in India (and sales worldwide).
its pretty sector dependent. if you're just building a generic SaaS or consumer product, you'll probably be fine in a lot of other cities. if you're in AI, SF is essentially the epicenter for that
There is still an insanely high concentration of tech workers so there's a very high chance your neighbors, friends, etc are in tech. in the south bay it feels like everyone works at FAANG/Cisco/Intel/Adobe etc, you get the point.
basically you no longer have to be here to build cool stuff outside of like AI, but your highest chances of success in either the startup world or the corporate ladder are still here. if you can't make it in tech/find your groove here, it'll be on you. the vast majority of innovation, now that crypto/miami are forgone memes, will still take place here in the near future
considering state politics and high housing prices, who knows if that'll last? maybe it makes a huge comeback like nyc (it was in a much worse state in the 70s/80s). maybe it goes the way of detroit. the answer is probably somewhere in the middle
You can find remote jobs in SF on https://www.remotely.jobs or similar sites.