Hi HN,<p>As my finals have nearly come to an end I've decided to take a break for a year, learn about myself, do some design and coding, and to come back after one year and decide which road to take.<p>By thinking about which road to take I wondered why everyone is so into the bay area: It's an extremely expensive place to live, and talent is hard to find as you have to compete with Google and other major tech companies.<p>VC money is relatively easy to find but you don't have to live in the valley for that.<p>Are the meetups really worth it?<p>I'm asking this because I would love to apply for the Thiel Fellowship next year, but it's important to realize that I'll probably live in the valley for a long time afterwards. That's okay if things work out, but if they don't I'm stuck with quite high expenses and no academic background (I'm currently in highschool) which makes it hard to compete with all the Standford & Berkley grads.. Which would mean I probably have to start my life over again at some place else.<p>I could also go to college in The Netherlands, but after college I've some debt to work myself around and before I get a chance to take some sort of a decision again I might be around 25-30 and planning to have babies or something like that. I need your help!
I lived in the bay area for a while and moved away. I went to the meetups and didn't get it initially. I used to joke that every person, including their dog, has a lil startup. After a while, I started to "get" the extreme optimism, ideals, etc. Don't get me wrong ... there is a TON of B.S. and lots of posers who end up getting successful. But it is a neat feeling to meet your tech heroes in person, and perhaps get a chance to work with them.<p>I do think SV is a special place and, if you are in tech, you should experience it at least once. I like to say "Silicon Valley is a state of mind". Once you get it, I think you can live anywhere with the same mindset. Certainly, you don't need to live in the valley to get "it" but it sure helps.
When I moved to San Francisco two years ago because I wanted to be around intelligent inspiring people that I could get help from on my journey to becoming a great software engineer. When I got here I saw that there are so my developers per square mile than anywhere I know. This is great for dev meetups and hacker meetups. This is bad when 10-15 people are looking at the same job position available.<p>I have found it to be pretty expensive to live here if you don't want a roommate or you want a decent place.<p>All and all, I found the bay area pretty great for anything and everything you want to do. I recently graduated from nerd school by visiting the Computer History Museum.
Its nerd central. Which means that you will come into contact with a lot of people who are like you. It makes the place unique, because there is simply no other place in the world where that happens. Well, maybe in akihabara or the chinese hardware market, but no other place.