More Than Half of Silicon Valley Residents Want to Leave: The Mood is Darkening
Theres something deeply ironic about the fact that the people building the future cant afford to live where theyre building it. Like think about that for a second. The engineers and designers and product managers creating apps that change how billions of people live are themselves stuck in brutal housing markets wondering if theyll ever own property. A new poll shows more than half of Silicon Valley residents are thinking about packing up and leaving. The dream factory is losing its shine.
The numbers are genuinely stunning when you look at them. Over 40% of respondents said they want to leave the Bay Area – not someday eventually maybe, but actively want to leave. And thats BEFORE you factor in the pandemic accelerating remote work and making people question why theyre paying $3,500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment when they could work from literally anywhere with decent wifi. Add in the wildfires turning the sky orange, the tent cities on every other block, the traffic that makes a 15-mile commute take 90 minutes, and you start to understand why the vibe has shifted.
Why People Actually Want Out
The reasons arent exactly surprising if youve been paying attention to this region for any length of time. Housing costs topped the list at 83% – because of course they did. A starter home in the Valley costs over a million dollars now. A STARTER home. The kind of place you might have bought for $200k in a normal market. Average rent is higher than most peoples mortgage payments elsewhere in the country. You can make six figures and still have roommates in your thirties because thats just what it takes to survive here.
Cost of living generally came in at 81%. Its not just housing – groceries cost more, gas costs more, everything costs more because landlords and businesses know their customers have tech salaries. Traffic and commute problems hit 79% which tracks with anyone whos ever tried to drive on 101 during rush hour and contemplated just abandoning their car. Homelessness concerns also registered at 79% because its impossible to ignore when youre stepping over tents on your walk to the coffee shop.
Its a region where billionaires step over tent encampments on their way to disrupt industries. Where the wealth generated by technology has created two completely different realities existing in the same physical space. One where youre arguing about stock options and another where youre wondering where your next meal comes from. That cognitive dissonance wears on people.
The remote work revolution is making this worse for the Valley specifically. Why pay California taxes and California rents if your job lets you work from Austin or Denver or Boise or literally anywhere with decent wifi? Companies are figuring this out too. Why pay Bay Area salaries when you can hire the same talent in cheaper markets?
What This Means for Tech Long Term
Silicon Valley has survived disruption before. Dot-com crash, financial crisis, various other moments when people predicted the end of the tech hub. But this feels different somehow. When your workforce starts fleeing because they cant afford to live anywhere near the office, thats a structural problem not a cyclical one. Companies are already adapting – Twitter said employees can work from home forever, Facebook is expanding remote hiring, startups are going distributed-first from day one.
But theres something lost when you cant bump into someone at a coffee shop and sketch out the next big thing on a napkin. The serendipity that made the Valley special requires physical proximity. Ideas bouncing around at happy hours and dinner parties and random encounters. Remote work gets tasks done but it doesnt build the same kind of ecosystem. Zoom calls arent the same as being in a room together.
Maybe thats fine though. Maybe tech innovation spreading across the country is actually healthier than having it concentrated in one absurdly expensive peninsula where only the wealthy can afford to participate. Maybe Austin and Miami and Nashville building tech scenes is good for everyone including the people who cant stomach California anymore. But it represents the end of something, and Im not sure everyone has fully reckoned with what that means yet. The Valley as we knew it might already be over.
