To Silicon Valley and Back: Part 1

I read so much about Silicon Valley, about the unique companies that have emerged from it and the people who shape it every day. No wonder, then, that it had long been a wish of mine to live and work there myself for once. My employer Roche made exactly that possible, so I get to tick another box on my bucket list. In total, I'll now be living and working in South San Francisco for three months (August to October), because with a 90-day B1 visa it's all fairly hassle-free, as I found out. So enjoy the first part of a series of posts from the tech mecca on the US West Coast.

Strictly speaking, South San Francisco isn't part of the so-called Silicon Valley. That's a region that only begins a few miles south of where I'm staying and working. Silicon Valley is actually a nickname for the Santa Clara Valley. In most discussions, though, pretty much everything from San Francisco City down to San Jose is counted as Silicon Valley.

What the Silicon Valley economic area and the city of San Francisco have in common is that they both belong to the Bay Area - a region made up of nine counties bordering the Bay. But today it's wrong to apply the term only to a geographic region, because it's much more about a culture!

Many well-known tech companies are based in the other counties around the Bay Area...and in San Francisco itself too, like Twitter, Reddit, Uber or Pinterest. But that's enough history for now.

Basically, my goal is simply to learn a lot more about what it's like to live and work in this famous economic region. To that end, I've set up meetings with well-known companies such as Apple, Google or Cisco. But the headquarters of Intel, eBay and HP are on the schedule too.

But I also want to find out what it's like for the people here. In the very first week I learned that, because of the mostly well-paid tech employees, the cost of living is enormous. As a result, many people move further out into the countryside, which in turn makes a car necessary. That in turn means the roads are constantly jammed with traffic, which in turn means most people now prefer to work from home. Which in turn means companies are having a hard time getting people back into the office after the pandemic. Not to mention that this makes it almost impossible to talk about a mobility transition the way we do in Germany. So it's kind of a chain reaction that isn't easy to untangle.

I live and work in South San Francisco - in the local hotspot for biotech companies. On my first day, I was naive enough to think I'd walk to work (after all, Europeans walk), but I had to realize that distances are simply different here and the scale on your phone is deceptive. At least, while walking through the local industrial area, I noticed how many startups and well-known biotech and pharma companies come together here.

The best thing about where I'm staying: my own kitchen. You can get "breakfast" here at the hotel, but it's nothing like the breakfast we know from hotels and is limited to yogurt and super sweet donuts. I'd come back round as a ball after a few months of that. What I do love, though, is American filter coffee - not that capsule stuff people are so into in Germany and Switzerland.*yuck
Only today I learned that it's not called "filter coffee" but "drip coffee"...after all, the coffee drips in this process. So every morning my first stop is the 5 l pot of drip coffee....delicious!

I try to get in touch with people here as much as possible and find out what it's like for them to live and work here. One thing I quickly noticed on my exploring trips through the cities here: sometimes big differences, for example between rich and poor or between individual population groups, are only a block apart.

I sometimes feel like I'm always moving between extremes. It somehow runs through everything: the culture of debate on radio and TV shows, income levels, living standards and much more. I somehow miss the space in between: the gray instead of just black and white. But it also reinforces the impression we in Europe often have of the USA. Extremes often collide and struggle to find the middle ground.

What really stands out to me so far is the topic of diversity! There's a lot of intense talk about what LGBTQI+ means. Sometimes so intense that you can almost grow tired of the topic, because it's also simply exhausting to always have to be careful not to "step on anyone's toes". In any case, it has a stronger influence on public debate than I'm used to from Germany or Switzerland. Both at work and in private life. But it's nice to see that especially here in the region, as a rule, everyone can be who they want to be.
And as vehemently as people try to give the topic of diversity room, there are once again extreme currents that want exactly the opposite: last weekend in Pacifica, a group of young men came toward me, bare-chested and heavily tattooed, and the first one in the group had a huge swastika tattooed across his entire chest. Simply shocking. You keep going from one extreme to the next.

Here, too, I got to experience the different extremes within no time at all: while visiting a pier and the anglers there, I brought one of them so much luck that he caught a fish. After he had landed it, several anglers standing around came over right away and offered tape measures to check the fish's minimum size. It's a small thing (one anglers like to forget), but it shows that people (in this case) treat resources consciously.
But then I keep seeing cars parked in front of supermarkets or even in front of the hotel with the engine running so they stay nice and cool. As long as something like that is possible, gas prices really still aren't high enough.

The topic of e-mobility is also very prominent. At least I have the feeling that I see more electric cars than back home. And yes, I know it's different in the more rural parts. Still, the tech companies are at the forefront here too: they're converting all their shuttle services to electric buses and in some cases rent them out to the public sector and other companies. They form a fixed part of the public transportation network - very different from back home, but apparently hard to do any other way because of the sheer distances.

Then I keep noticing packaging : single-use everywhere, more and more! I think there's still a long way to go here to treat resources more consciously in this area too. Once again, the companies are the positive pioneers: there I see posters everywhere pointing to reusable dishes or saying you can bring your own cups to avoid waste. I find it amazing what an important role "modern" companies play when it comes to driving change.

What's the first thing you go see when you're in the Bay Area? Exactly: THE hotspot for tech company recruiting...Stanford University. Since in Europe you always read about the American elite universities, I wanted to see one for myself, and what can I say. I wasn't disappointed. A huge, impeccably maintained campus. Not comparable to mine back in the day. You can simply tell there's money in it. Funny fun fact: as a non-religious person, I naturally noticed the church in the middle. Right in front of the entrance was a sign that, I think, isn't too far-fetched when you otherwise teach young people natural sciences and a fact-based life. ;-)

I also noticed expressions of solidarity with Ukraine on the info boards everywhere, including the related calls for donations and the flag. And as already mentioned, the topic of diversity in gender and skin color was noticeable too. Anything else would have surprised me at a university like this, though.

After a detour to downtown Palo Alto, the following days took me to the beach in Pacifica and north for some sightseeing: Ocean Beach and then on to the Lands End Lookout viewpoint.

Today I had my briefing call to prepare my visit to the Apple campus. On Monday I'll also take a look at WeWork's vision of new workspaces. I'd also really like to visit Twitter, HP, Uber and Reddit. For those companies, though, I'm still looking for contacts ;-)

My colleagues here also gave me a list with tons of recommendations of what to see - besides companies. I think I'll try out quite a few of them too. So stay tuned, and if you have any tips, send them my way.

• Go to Part 2 of “To Silicon Valley and Back”
• Go to Part 3 of “To Silicon Valley and Back”
• Go to Part 4 of “To Silicon Valley and Back”