Reverse Commute to Silicon Valley (San Jose, San Francisco: appointed, best neighborhood, condos)

[starfox68]

Hi I am and engineer and wish to move out to SF both to advance my career and to get a change of pace for from the East Coast. However, the majority of jobs I am qualified for are in the Valley.

I am pretty highly suburb averse. I am married but no kids and don't plan on having any. I guess from my research Potero Hill is the best neighborhood for us due to proximity to Caltrain and the freeways. How crazy am I to try to make that commute everyday, either by car or train? Which would be better?

I heard that Mountain View has a nice downtown but would someone who doesn't like suburban life like it?

[mdwstrnkid]

I live in SF (Lower Pac Heights) and commute to Palo Alto every day. It's takes me around 45 minutes in the morning and usually around 55-60 minutes in the evening. Definitely not the world's best commute, but I've been tolerating it for the past couple of years and plan to do it for at least the next couple of years.

[humboldtrat]

San Jose, a city with 1 million population has a downtown with high rise office buildings, hotels, etc. along with night life. Outside of the downtown core, it's suburban sprawl in all directions.

San Francisco to San Jose would be a 100 mile round trip commute. It will get old after a short time.

[starfox68]

It looks like I'm gonna have to suck it up living in SF really appeals to me, I'm not ready for the suburbs yet.

[sonarrat]

Take I-280 if you can. One of the world's most beautiful freeways, and well under capacity for the reverse commute.

[cardinal2007]

Originally Posted by starfox68

Hi I am and engineer and wish to move out to SF both to advance my career and to get a change of pace for from the East Coast. However, the majority of jobs I am qualified for are in the Valley.

I am pretty highly suburb averse. I am married but no kids and don't plan on having any. I guess from my research Potero Hill is the best neighborhood for us due to proximity to Caltrain and the freeways. How crazy am I to try to make that commute everyday, either by car or train? Which would be better?

I heard that Mountain View has a nice downtown but would someone who doesn't like suburban life like it?

To tell the truth, I think that someone that doesn't like suburban life would more likely prefer downtown San Mateo or downtown Palo Alto to downtown Mountain View simply due to the size of the downtown and the kind of services and kind of housing stock available in each. Of course I can't tell for certain because each of these downtowns has more of a small town feel than say a more traditional suburb like Foster City or Fremont, they used to be small towns until they were swallowed up by suburbia after World War II, but they certainly don't have a big city feel to them. You should go to these places sometime and check them out, perhaps you will be disappointed by the retail choices or the hours of operation or something else, but I don't think you can tell without visiting.

[mayorhaggar]

Plenty of people commute like that every day. Potrero Hill, Dogpatch and the eastern part of SOMA are all popular for Silicon Valley commuters who take Caltrain, though most places right next to Caltrain are very expensive condos for the elite set. Instead you could live somewhere cheaper in SF like maybe the Sunset near a highway or whatever and take 280 south, or you can drive to Caltrain and park nearby like at the 22nd street station.

Also a lot of companies in Silicon Valley have private buses that shuttle people from SF to offices in SV. It would still take a while but at least you could sleep or use your laptop or whatever on the bus.

Also I've been to downtown Mountain View once and it was pretty nice, there were several restaurants and shops and some nice Asian grocery stores, it looks kind of like a typical shopping street in San Francisco.

[gone down south]

Bay area suburbs are very unlike their East Coast equivalents They're more like mini-cities of their own with lots of services and attractions. Each city on the Peninsula has it's own character, but they run into and overlap each other so much that you can find anything from a quasi-bumping downtown (Palo Alto) to a sleepy village (Atherton) just a few miles apart from each other.

That being said, if you want a real 'city' life, you have to live in San Francisco. Where are you going to work? A lot of companies run shuttles from downtown for their tech workers, complete with coffee and free wifi so you can start working as soon as you board.