Career-wise ( aka not cultural / lifestyles differences), what are the biggest differences between being SWE in Bay Area vs NYC?
NYC has better exposure to tech roles in non-tech industries (finance, healthcare, etc.) while SF is focused much more exclusively on tech companies
Anyone have insight on working for tech companies (ie. FAANG) in NYC as opposed to banks?
Having worked at both places, I can say the tech scene is more solid in the bay, in terms of skills, teams, growth and anything on those lines, ofc, this shouldn’t be any surprise. NYC is scaled down version of all that, but if ones not very ambitious, NYC would work out for that person. Also I felt like there were lesser politics and more engineering in the bay. Job hopping I think is not as easy in NY within tech space.
Mostly this. The big companies are starting to see the value out in NYC, but there’s definitely less talent. That being said, I think it’s easier to be ambitious and grow in NYC as the rest of the talent is less, well, talented. It’s easier to stand out.
Financial service companies are still living in stone ages compared to the valley startup and typical FAANG setup. The Netflix and Amazon can ship jobs instantly to Bangalore at the drop of the hat when recession hits. Same might be true little bit for big banks.. but Not so much because of inefficient processes in banks and overall less fungibility for SWE. So if you want more job security for less pay NYC is great.
This is wrong, banks will always let go of employees first in a recession, bay area for job security.
Google for job security. I heard in a talk from Peter Norvig that during the last recession they have been told to hire the more they could and build more. Recession for some is opportunity for others.