I'll admit I'm asking myself a similar question, about my different US HCOLA city. (And I hope comments don't make me regret candor.)
One reason to stay is familiarity, and knowing that I can at least scrape by here a while longer, including living car-free (but not compete economically with the FAANG outpost workers, for safe and comfortable housing).
Another reason to stay is that -- should scraping-by not work out, or the economy suddenly gets much worse, such as due to geopolitical instability -- the city government has a lot of money and tax base, and I'm guessing currently a better social safety net than much of the US.
Another reason to stay is that my startup might have to pivot, due to how consumers are using LLMs, with nothing obvious (and ethical) to pivot to. But my skillset is sometimes highly valued by highly-paying companies, as well as early startups, and the right carrot to abandon my startup would erase the biggest downsides of staying in my city.
Since you have no roots there, you can pick anywhere in the area you want. Are your meetings with contacts in SF infrequent enough to live somewhere vaguely nearby instead? I imagine half of them are in the South Bay anyway, which iirc is a 2hr+ train ride.
> about my different US HCOLA city. (And I hope comments don't make me regret candor.)
I mean there's only a few of them that standout, so you're already self-selecting to the point where it would be less noticeable to just name the city; rather than make it mysterious+bring attention to it.
> But naming it seemed a little rude to the place, in that it's negative PR.
It's a place, not a person. Anthropomorphizing it doesn't magically bestow it feelings nor shame.
Additionally, the point isn't to shame it. It's that by making it a "puzzle", you're more likely to have people calling it out; rather than if you just named it. If someone saw "Seattle", they'd read it and forget it five seconds later.
One reason to stay is familiarity, and knowing that I can at least scrape by here a while longer, including living car-free (but not compete economically with the FAANG outpost workers, for safe and comfortable housing).
Another reason to stay is that -- should scraping-by not work out, or the economy suddenly gets much worse, such as due to geopolitical instability -- the city government has a lot of money and tax base, and I'm guessing currently a better social safety net than much of the US.
Another reason to stay is that my startup might have to pivot, due to how consumers are using LLMs, with nothing obvious (and ethical) to pivot to. But my skillset is sometimes highly valued by highly-paying companies, as well as early startups, and the right carrot to abandon my startup would erase the biggest downsides of staying in my city.