I&#x27;d submit that what you have there isn&#x27;t that what I&#x27;ve said is wrong, but that what you&#x27;ve &quot;picked and chosen&quot; from the SV lifestyle is nearly the null set. That&#x27;s fine for you, no sarcasm, I am glad you are happy and I have no great love for SV myself, but it doesn&#x27;t make my point wrong.<p>Me, I live in the Midwest and work in a quite substantial local office of a SV-based company that is now midsized. I get the job I want (in particular I want to work in a place where programmers are the core value providers of the company, not a cost-center afterthought, which is what is generally true of the other companies where I live), in the place I want, because I do not want to live in SV, and do appreciate being near family. Granted my choices are less, but I only really need one job &quot;right now&quot; and enough fallback that I have choices; I do not need thousands and thousands of options.<p>I know it can be done. I know it&#x27;s not an either&#x2F;or, because I have in my hands an existence proof of something that is not either&#x2F;or.