I’m from a small town in the San Francisco Bay Area called San Carlos. This town is among others, such as San Mateo, Menlo Park and Palo Alto, connected by the railroad that runs between San Francisco and San Jose. These towns mostly began as country retreats for wealthy San Franciscans then tuned into middle and upper-middle class suburbs.

When I was growing up, San Carlos was just a quiet little town with good schools and baseball and soccer fields filled with kids on weekends. I now know that I lived a privileged life, but nothing like the life that’s lived there now. Or rather, after it became Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is not a geographical term–it is simply a term used to describe an area in Northern California where silicon chips were manufactured. Wikipedia attempts to define its borders:

“Geographically, “Silicon Valley” encompasses the northern part of Santa Clara Valley and adjacent communities in the southern parts of the San Francisco Peninsula and East Bay. It now reaches approximately from San Mateo (on the Peninsula) and the Fremont/Newark area in the East Bay down through San Jose, centered roughly on Sunnyvale. The Highway 17 corridor through the Santa Cruz Mountains into Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz County is sometimes considered a part of Silicon Valley, as well as the East Bay cities of Livermore and Pleasanton.”

An article in today’s New York Times grabbed my attention for its headline:
In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich
It goes on to describe how people who have millions of dollars still feel the need to work 12 hours days and weekends. It’s never enough because someone else has more. I love the Bay Area–I think it is one of the most spectacular places in the world to live. Most of my childhood friends still live there and have managed to escape this mentality. But still, I find these attitudes distressing and can certainly list it as a reason why I no longer live there.