I wouldn't trust keyword analysis or word frequency to figure out why people are leaving. And unless AI has gotten a lot smarter than I'm aware of, I'd say that the only way to get a meaningful result is to actually read each blog post and then write a short 5-10 word summary. Sure, it's subjective but you'd get a lot more nuance like, "His girlfriend lives in New York", "Misses skiing and now has money to do just that", "Closer to elderly parents who need care", "New startup in Texas that's perfect fit", "Can't renew U.S. visa", "Moving to attend grad school".<p>The author has pared the list down to 137 blog posts, so even a fast reader would take a day to read all of them. But probably he already spent at least a day collecting that data, doing the analysis, creating the graphics, etc., so it's not crazy to suggest doing it manually. Alternatively, the list could be further cut down to 20-40 postings, which could be read in a few hours. That would result in a way more interesting (human) analysis.<p>EDIT: For each blog post, it would be interesting to note the sentiment of whether the person is being <i>pushed</i> out of San Francisco (can't afford the city, lost job, can't renew visa, etc.) or whether they are being <i>pulled</i> to a new location (perfect new job, girlfriend/boyfriend in different location, etc.).
I also find it curious that safety and sanitation aren't referenced. I by no means have all the answers; however, I am sure my main reason for leaving San Francisco will be along the lines of these things. I've had traumatic experiences living in this city and I am 6 ft male that lifts weights often (I'm just trying to imply that some people most likely get harassed even more than I). I wish I had more of a capacity to help this city rather than leave.
We left in 2015 because:
1) The extremely high cost of living which makes everyone poor. only 25% of the housing there is market rate and thus available. Our salaries were pretty high working in tech, but not high enough to afford a nice place to live in SF.<p>2) Homelessness<p>3) The politics.<p>4) Poop (although much worse now). It's not so much the poop itself that bothers me. It's the attitude of the politicians in SF. we just really disliked the way things were being handled and are currently being handled in SF. They are "progressive" in title only. there's really no progress in living standard at all. if anything, things are getting worse and worse and worse, based on the things I've read and the stories I'm hearing.<p>5) we didn't want to live in a city that might not even be able to provide schooling for our child.<p>6) Day care costs would have been astronomical (by now it's up to 3000 per month, i've heard)
My main reasons:<p>* number of homeless people (they are everywhere)<p>* safety in general<p>* poor public transport<p>* cost of renting and buying<p>* density (it is quite an empty city and is designed for cars)<p>* a bit too cold
The homeless and trash situation in the bay area has exploded in the last 2 years. Big sections of 880 are strewn with trash like a dump site and there are tent cities populating the underpasses in Berkeley, West/East Oakland. The cities governments seem paralyzed between bickering homeless advocacy groups, CalTrans and tax payers furious at the decline of so many public areas.<p>Time is running out for some of the regions politicians. With hundreds of millions spent, it feels like there is almost zero impact.
> i was surprised at how seldom “junior” was written, e.g. “jr developer.” either employees stick around awhile before calling it quits on San Francisco, or they lie about their job title.<p>Because "Junior Software Engineer" is usually written as just "Software Engineer", "Software Engineer I", ...?
Better to just look at 1-way Uhaul truck rental trends --<p><a href="https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19966/U-Haul-Migration-Trends-Top-25-Growth-Cities-Of-2019/" rel="nofollow">https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19966/U-Haul-Migration-...</a>
> sadly i failed to write my own retrospective when i left in 2016 after a year of working in venture capital, then a portfolio startup, and then founding my own company.<p>Not to put too fine a point on it, but 1 year to do any one of these things, let alone all three, doesn't really seem like much time at all.
One factor that wasn't mentioned here (probably because people don't really mention it publicly) that I've anecdotally heard of from a number of people in tech who've made the SF->NYC move is the better gender and career diversity there. For men this can equate to a better dating lifestyle, and just in general some want to be surrounded by people besides tech bros.<p>Regarding politics, I wonder if another way to interpret this is people who find San Francisco too liberal (or unsupportive of Trump) and want to move somewhere more representative of how a majority of the country (however you define that) thinks.
I'm a little disappointed that you're still convinced it's a "safety" thing.<p>People say the same thing about Seattle, and virtually without exception they're people who have simply never lived in a major city before, and wildly misunderstand what counts as "crime."<p>Like the guy upthread who wanted to move because he'd experienced <i>two</i> car prowls.
> thus i’m curious how conservatives or Trump have anything to do with one’s departure.<p>Oh, that one's simple enough if you assume they're part of the reason why you'd leave the country. And while we're on that topic, the same two reasons might also get factored into deciding to <i>not</i> come to SF or any other US city -- alongside guns, overpriced education, and overpriced healthcare.
When I ran the numbers about a decade ago, the BA was <i>significantly</i> more expensive than NY, at least if you need a house and a good school for your kids. SF proper is inconceivable, of course.
> thus i’m curious how conservatives or Trump have anything to do with one’s departure.<p>Perhaps, because one can leave the country when you leave SF? I did.
For anyone else who finds the lack of capitalization distracting, run the following in your JS console to fix most of the sentences and "I"s<p><pre><code> document.querySelectorAll(`p`).forEach(el => {
el.textContent = el.textContent.replace(/[\s]i[\s]/g, ' I ');
el.textContent = el.textContent.split(/\.[\s]+/g)
.filter(sent => !!sent)
.map(sent => sent[0].toUpperCase() + sent.substr(1))
.join('. ');
})
</code></pre>
Edit: Tweaked to filter out empty strings because it died about 80% of the way down the page
This is an interesting analysis. It's kind of social science research. I wish the author had some training in the area.<p>A simple way to improve the trustworthy of the analysis is having another person working with you to develop the categories, and then independently code the posts, and then resolve the differences through discussion.