Leave before it makes you soft

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In the by now famous fake commencement speech "Wear Sunscreen," Mary Schmich states: "Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft." There is some truth to this statement, but by and large, it is a misunderstanding.

Living in Northern California, in particular Silicon Valley, is convenient, if you belong to the well-to-do middle class or are a rich person anyway. Everything is set up to make life easy for you. Supermarkets are open 24h a day, highways are wide and flowing evenly, people rarely honk at you, and if someone steps onto your property, you can just shoot them (after all, this is America).

Work life, however, is not nearly as convenient. Startup crazed people work long hours, easily as long as the fabled even more crazy 100h-a-week investment bankers of New York City. The convenient setup of the valley allows people to channel all their energy into work, not being distracted by having to fight for a parking space or worrying whether they have time to buy dinner before stores close.

Not so in a big city like Berlin, where I currently live, or New York City I presume. Here, you can easily find people peeing at a corner of your house when you leave for work in the morning, and they are still peeing when you return at night. You either return early so not to miss store closing hours or you feed on fast food. (Which, in Berlin, thanks to the ubiquitous Döner is easy.) Parking space is elusive, people honk and take fun in chasing pedestrians of the street by speeding up.

Living in a big city makes you hard, but living in the valley makes you focus.


Turns out, Paul Graham wrote a piece on this issue in 2006, see http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

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