Impressions from the Bay Area
I’m writing this on a flight back from San Francisco. It was my first time in the Bay Area and I thought it might be useful to document my impressions. I spent the week in Palo Alto, mostly on Stanford’s campus, but did venture into SF for a bit. These are my thoughts.
The Bay Area felt like a region of industry. There was almost an underlying current of sorts, reinforcing the idea that everyone was working on something related to technology. I don’t know how else to describe it – everything radiated tech, from the SaaS ads along the highway, to the easy-to-find outlets and the air filtration system in the airport, to the fact that Teslas were the most common Uber vehicles. Los Angeles strikes me as probably the only other city in the US that has such a strong atmosphere of industry.
SF truly feels like the edge of the world. I don’t know if it’s the fog, the way the mountains line the coastline, or something else.
The weather was beautiful (especially in SF, where it was consistently in the low 70s). However, I think I’d miss snow too much to live in the Bay full-time. Seasons build character.
Stanford’s campus is huge. I couldn’t help but compare the campus to Penn (where I went to school). Geographically, Stanford is probably 5x the size of Penn, yet it has the same undergraduate class size. While Stanford was beautiful, density seems useful for a college environment. The core of Penn’s campus is a 4x8 block rectangle in University City (in Philly). There were maybe 3-4 main paths students could take to get from one end of campus to another. As a result, I’d casually run into friends and classmates all the time. It was good for spontaneity. It was also good for exchanging ideas; everyone was kind of packed into the same spaces, so information flowed more easily. In hindsight, I’m very grateful for having that campus density.
Working on PT (with much of my team in ET) was suboptimal. I normally use my mornings to take walks, think, read, write, and set myself up for the rest of the day. I lost that because of the time difference. Now that I’m headed back to the East Coast, I’m looking forward to resuming my routine.
This was my first time to the Bay, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. It will be exciting to see how my impressions evolve next time.