Around two months ago, on May 18, I landed on San Francisco International Airport on a sunny afternoon. As expected, I immediately “mingled” into the ocean of people, rushing, calling, eating, and chatting. Once I exited the airport gate leading to the outside, I could finally experience the typical hustling airport scene depicted in movies. As an initial step to become a local, I called a Lyft back to my company.
The media had always characterized San Francisco in particular, and Bay Area in general, as the hub of technology. I wasn’t convinced until ubiquitous advertisements of Bitbucket and Atlassian (FIY, those are two giant software companies) struck my sight, as opposed to common McDonald or some health insurance advertisement boards filled over other cities. You read it right, the tech culture was totally in your face.
As my Lyft rode over hilly roads of downtown San Francisco and the famous Market Street, giant tech headquarters started to reveal themselves. The familiar sky-blue dove represented Twitter, whose neighbors were Uber and Square. Heading South of Market Street, I could easily spot Airbnb, Zynga, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Yelp.
Taxi business would not find a chance to prosper due to the rise of Uber and Lyft. San Franciscans supported new model of business and technology, and played a major role of pushing startups into mainstream market. Such an open mindset embodied the city’s culture: always welcoming innovations and the appreciating creativity.
Locals walking on the streets proudly put on themselves t-shirts with company logo. Everyone were engaged into their business. New tech products were supported by the majority of people. Surprisingly, everyone seemed to be building something, such as mobile applications, robots, data mining, machine learning algorithms.
The geeky culture was real!
San Francisco
