Ask HN: I’m visiting Bay Area and I dislike the “hacker” culture. Please help

Second, it's not like you're going to have a vegan feminist drum-circle (to use your own caricature) pounding away in your coworking space while you're trying to get work done. I wouldn't worry about that.

Third, your self-description should be able to fit in perfectly. Again, regardless of what it might seem like on the internet, there aren't roving bands of evil liberals looking to go all Clockwork Orange on you if you're at a Starbucks listening to a Glenn Beck podcast or whatever. Most people just don't give a shit.

Fourth, please reconsider posting like this. You paint with a really wide brush, and not only does it make you seem like an internet right-winger (which may not actually be true), it also reeks of ignorance of getting along with other people and being open-minded and excited to meet cultures outside of your comfort zone.

Lastly, if you want to visit a place with real diversity and make that money stretch (seriously, that's like 3 months rent here), check out Houston. Or Austin. Or Dallas.

>> I dislike people who call themselves hackers, rockstars, ninjas, nomads etc. I don’t care about yoga, organic food, vegans, feminists or spirit animals. I dislike overuse of the word “community” and I think the whole “lifehacking” thing is retarded.

(Disclosure: I live in Oakland.)

I too eat meat, drink beer, and talk about the same topics. You'll find that is true of most "hackers" in the bay area too. The term hacker is used more often as shorthand to describe somebody who is into technology without getting into the details (software&hardware&ux).

I have seen precisely one person ever describe themselves as a rockstar, and we rejected his job application for plagiarizing his code samples. Nobody in the real world does this, and you're unlikely to get force-fed yoga, lifehacking, etc.

There are still things that weird me out about the bay area, but overall I really enjoy my time there. I encourage you to check out some tech meetups.

Oh. And Noisebridge and it's mailing list aren't representative of the larger geek community in SFO either, just saying ;)

I’m the type of person who likes eating meat, drinking beer, talking about politics, money, science, entrepreneurship, programming etc.

You'll find plenty of company.

How are meat, beer, and broad discussions antithetical to your perception of how people in the Bay Area live?

In the end, NYC was a no-brainer for me. I consistently found the bay area has developed an homogenous culture that even pervaded my non-tech friends' lives. People always asked the dreaded "so, what do you do?" way earlier than they did in NYC. And unlike in NYC, I often felt like I was being judged for my answer. I hated this because I like a strong work-life seperation. In NYC I found there's less of a social "hierarchy" based on profession. At a typical party you can meet an artist, an actor, a doctor, a hedge fund investor, and a marketing executive, and all may kick ass at their jobs. I got exposed to an insane amount of culture in NYC that I didn't see in SF.

Keep in mind that this is written from the perspective of a professional - there are probably large parts of the two cities that culturally overlap. Also, I'm not trying to say SF is a bad city, but it isn't for everyone.

There is more than one "hacker" tradition in the US. For instance, Caltech near Los Angeles, on the west coast, and MIT, near Boston, on the east coast, have been rivals for a long time. They have different cultures.

As someone native to the Midwest, educated in the Mid-Atlantic, and currently working in the South, it is readily apparent to me that there is no monolithic American culture. I can't stand the Western hippy-dippy nonsense, the Southern obsession with church and football, or any of the idiotic management fads that affect my work culture.

But the San Francisco/Silicon Valley culture has massive amounts of cash pumping through it at the moment, and bits of it are metastasizing elsewhere. As a result, I have seen open-plan offices, complete with ping-pong tables and people wearing shoes with separated toes, in places like Denver and Nashville.

What I really want is to see a company that hires for competence rather than cultural fit, values aptitude over experience, and doesn't try to pretend to be anything more than a place of business--where people go to do work, finish it, and then leave.

I also like the things you like, and I dislike the winters in Wisconsin. It would be very nice if there were a place other than Silicon Valley to enjoy the networking effect, without the cultural trappings that are such a giant turn-off to people elsewhere in the world, and even elsewhere in the US. But if you're looking to get paid, you may just have to suppress your irritation for a while.

I've found subsequent trips to be much easier. Unfortunately, the most vocal and easiest to meet within the community were the most abrasive / kool aid driven. Keep digging.

Visit the bay area, enjoy the good food. Find a way to head into any of the surrounding hills for a nice hike. Visit the computer museum. Have some coffee at the Philz on Middlefield Road. Enjoy your time there.

Regardless of your general "help me understand the Bay" stance, this a HUGE negative blaming statement that originates from you alone.

I live in the Bay. I regularly modify my diet to see how it affects my health. I found out I'm allergic to gluten by testing its effects on making my ears ring, stomach ache, etc. Riding my bike clears my mind like nothing else. Why I do this, how I do it, talk about it, terms I use to refer to it and pretty much anything else I choose to do is up to me, and shouldn't be judged by you unless it affects you directly, even if you did read it somewhere. Which it doesn't, and you didn't.

I hear you when you want other opinions about the culture here, but as others have stated, the Bay Area has a massive number of people in the technology scene. We have compassion, asshats, brilliance, idiocy, over-achievers, under-achievers, massive revenue generators, massive cash burners, and everything in between. All from direct observations, FWIW.

If you want a good experience, then let all your expectations go and don't worry about it. Seek out meaningful conversations and experiences and let what will be, be.

In other words, come live in the moment, for a moment is all that you have here.

I hope your stay is an enjoyable one. I, for one, love it here.

You're talking about close to a million people, maybe chill the fuck out and show up with more of an open mind. Or like, don't.

[Edit]

Uggh. I should probably leave the comment alone, but I feel bad about it so I'll try to add something more constructive. Like every large-enough subculture, the startup-scene tropes have some truth to them but it's still a very large and diverse set of people and ideas. If anything, I feel like the tendency toward a hyped up monoculture has receded in the last couple of years (somewhere in 2011 it seemed like we hit peak-food-photo-founder-rockstar).

I don't live in SF but I work for a startup there and travel up there a lot. All told, it's a really incredible city and while there's plenty about the startup culture to find fault in, it remains true that there are is an incredible density of really smart and motivated people there passionately working on stuff.

No apparent shortage of meat or beer, either. You can probably go a full day without being forced to eat tofu.

I'd say, you are going to somewhere new. Keep an open mind. You might find out you like some of this stuff.

Honestly sounds like the NYC culture is more your thing