I think in the long run, not being forced to live in the Bay Area if you want to be ambitious in tech will be
good for the Bay Area. If you don’t feel forced to live there to make money, you’ll hopefully only go there if you actually like it. So perhaps the tech community will become less “transient”, more invested in the community, and not as big “haters” as they were. Or at least as they were perceived.
I’m also pretty skeptical this is the bay area’s death knell. Web3 is a pretty bad example if you’re looking at funding, because if you interpret web3 as just “crypto” or decentralized, that suffers a legitimacy problem which makes all VC averse to it, not just the Bay Area VC (though of course a lot of crypto stuff does get funded still). And obviously it’s not only people in the Bay Area who work less than their stated 40 hrs or go to tech conferences…
In the near-term, say 5-10 years from now, I think the Bay Area will represent maybe 50% of the “hot” tech industry (not counting giants based in the Bay Area which have already spread all over the world) whereas it was maybe 80% before. Obviously right now is an aberration because with remote work you don’t benefit much from the network effects.
I’m also pretty skeptical this is the bay area’s death knell. Web3 is a pretty bad example if you’re looking at funding, because if you interpret web3 as just “crypto” or decentralized, that suffers a legitimacy problem which makes all VC averse to it, not just the Bay Area VC (though of course a lot of crypto stuff does get funded still). And obviously it’s not only people in the Bay Area who work less than their stated 40 hrs or go to tech conferences…
In the near-term, say 5-10 years from now, I think the Bay Area will represent maybe 50% of the “hot” tech industry (not counting giants based in the Bay Area which have already spread all over the world) whereas it was maybe 80% before. Obviously right now is an aberration because with remote work you don’t benefit much from the network effects.