If we're Linkedin connections, you might have noticed that I left Apple a few weeks ago. Not only that, but I also left the USA to go back to Europe!

What is happening? Why am I here back in (allegedly cloudy) London?

Well, after almost 4 years of working at Apple, and after 2 years of living in the heart of Silicon Valley in California, I decided to take a small break and reconsider what's (really) important for me in life. Turns out that working in Big Tech in the midst of Silicon Valley is not really high on the list.

Living in the USA was - surprisingly - a big culture shock

When I got offered my job at Apple (with relocation to Sunnyvale) I thought that it'd be an incredible opportunity to visit and explore California. Enjoy the outdoors, motorbike around North America, so many possibilities! Before planning the move, I even wrote a small app that every day would check the weather in London, San Francisco and the area around San Jose to see how many sunny days I had in front of me. And the results were sheer joy: Sunnyvale was (indeed) filled with glorious sun most of the year!

Plus, one thing that I always suffered from being in London is that the closest mountains here are not so.. mountainous. You can drive for a few hours and not get anything above 1000 meters. For someone born close (but not too close) to the Alps, and used to hiking casually on the weekends, that's always been a bit of hit. And the sea too is.. far! I found beautiful beaches in Cornwall and in Dorset, but man, that's always a bit of ride to get there.

So before leaving, when I was just optimistically looking at a map of the Bay Area, the nature looked like a great match for me. Less of an hour motorbike ride to get to decent mountains (like the whole Santa Cruz range) or beaches (Half Moon Bay or even down to Monterey)! I was genuinely enthusiastic to travel there and live a few good adventures!

Shock #1: Holidays!

Turns out, however, that to live adventures you need one important thing: free time! And if you're working, free time generally requires another thing: paid holidays! And you know what the USA is really bad at.. paid holidays!

My compensation was abundant, but my benefits only included 12 paid days of holiday for a whole year. And guess what, yes - I'm a lazy European, and I'm used to at least 25 days. I can't even plan a proper road trip if I only have 12 days. What am I gonna do: a road trip from Costco to Costco between adjacent towns? (in the end, I managed to have a small one-week road trip all the way to Las Vegas from Mountain View, because I couldn't resist. But it was not nearly enough to explore all I wanted to see, and we ended up rushing quite a bit!)

Not to mention that the US has sooo few bank holidays throughout the year that the majority of your time off is just gonna be between Thanksgiving and New Years' eve. The rest of the year is just a loooong grind until you reach November and you finally realize that you've been (mentally) decomposing for all these months.

Let's be clear: I work "hard" when needed, but I really need time off to regenerate. I actually want to live my life and travel the world, not just commute to work until I'm 40 and then retire early. I know my energy levels will only keep going gently down with time, so I want to use most of my time now that I have most of my energy.

So, in the end, while I did a good amount of "adventuring", it definitely was way less than it could have been, mostly because I just never had enough time. And no, I'm not gonna fake a 1 week long cold just to avoid using my PTO and prolong my holidays..

Shock #2. Camping is a different experience

Another brief shock was camping. I love camping.

For the kind of travelling that my wife and I do, most of the times we just look at a point on the map and say: let's go there! Then, we just check if there are enough campings in the area so that we can plan to check out a few once there. But we don't actually book many of the campings too much in advance, we just tend to call them on the day (or sometimes not book them at all!) so that we can adjust our plans depending on what we discover while travelling.

Well, turns out that the majority of campings in State Parks in California have to be booked weeks (if not months!) in advance! And privately owned campsites sometimes are more expensive than a cheap motel (like, $50-$80 just to pitch my small tent and a have a parking spot for a motorbike?). So that kills most of the "go with the flow" approach that I successfully employed in most of my trips in Europe.

That's mostly because of one reason: the camping culture is quite different from continental Europe (and the UK). It's not uncommon at all to see folks carrying their entire existence when camping, and staying at the same campsite for a long time. That happens in Europe too (particularly in France, which has a strong campervan culture), so no surprise.. but what is different is just the scale of it. Gigantic RVs, people carrying furniture and their own BBQs.. I mean, that's just not how I roll and I won't judge, but that explains why the need to book so much in advance almost everywhere. Most campings have big areas for single families, so where you could have fit a few more spots, you only get a single big spot made for RVs.

Like everything, there have been happy accidents: we visited beautiful campings that we got to last minute (where luckily, somebody had just left early while still leaving their spot paid), but overall it was always much more stressful to plan (at least compared to my experience in Europe), so much that it really killed some of the joy of being spontaneous.

Wild-camping is also an option, but since I didn't know the fauna/flora too well I really didn't feel comfortable with it. Although, to be fair, one time we did book a place that ended up being sooo empty that it was basically equivalent to wild camping.. but paying a fee 🙃

Shock #3: So you wanna walk/cycle around town?

Okay, so in terms of the planned adventures, thing went okayish (in VFX we would say: Could Be Better). What about everyday life?

Well, lemme tell you one tiny story. When we first got our temp accommodation in Sunnyvale, we were close to a small shopping center. We could literally see it from the window of our apartment! That's great, pretty handy to do casual groceries and buy day-to-day stuff and just have a walk in the glorious sun.

And yet, if you opened any Maps app, the directions would be:

  • 5 minutes by car
  • 30 minutes by foot (!?)

That's because between us and the shops there was a gigantic (uncrossable) 5-lanes motorway. The only sketchy way for pedestrians to get there was to go aaaall the way round some of the main junctions of the motorway, while surrounded by the beautiful noises coming from Ford F150s going at 70-80mph.

Guess what? Most of California was like that! Well, maybe not all of it was as terrible, but definitely all of it was designed for cars first, "stand-alone" humans later, if you're lucky. As for cyclists: well, take this lovely painted lane where Cybertrucks pass you at 45mph, and be thankful!

Your average pedestrian crossing.

As a matter of fact, most of the tiny towns that we visited in the Bay Area had a single pedestrianized "main street" that you could literally walk start-to-end in 5 minutes. The rest of the city? An urban sprawl made of:

  • Residential areas
  • Commercial areas
  • Big Tech offices (generally outside the city)

Wanna go do groceries real quick? Gotta take the car, it's really "close"! (unless you settle for a sad CVS)
Wanna go downtown for an ice cream? Gotta take the car, it's really "close"! (unless you order it via Uber)
Wanna grab lunch out of the office with your colleagues? Gotta take the car, it's really "close"! (no alternatives here)

Because I'm stubborn as hell, I would never bend to the idea of just designing my whole life around a car. One thing I enjoyed from London was that taking the car was no longer the only choice. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind driving (of course, riding a motorbike is better!), but I find walking/cycling heals me, while driving in a car (particularly in traffic) wounds me. So I somehow pacifically resisted and bought an electric cargo bike, which turned out to be the best purchase I have ever made in the US (maybe except for music gear at Guitar Center!).

Even with my zippy bike, however, the reality was still there, even if I made it slightly less worse by being able to reach 25mph without a sweat. I am happy we have resisted without owning a car in the US for 2 years (mostly thanks to Zipcar), but in the end.. I really don't want to have those kind of badges of honour.

I just want to live a life where places are designed for humans first, and 'humans-but-in-cars' later.

Shock #4: Non-tech culture in Silicon Valley is.. non-existent?

Who would have thought: the place that got us some of the most enshittified products of all time doesn't really have a big musical/artistic/literary tradition. Maybe if they had read a few more classics they would have enjoyed reading their message and resisted the temptation to keep doing "One More Thing" all these years.. ('cause guess what: every year it's the same "thing" repackaged forever).

Of course, there are pockets of culture here and there (particularly in SF), but even compared to the tiny town that I'm from in Italy, it was pretty depressing. At least there we have pubs with live music and collectives organizing local art exhibitions! When I grew up I always felt it was just a "farmers town" but oh man, I was actually pretty darn wrong.

Wasn't California the home of counter-culture? Of anarchist movements? Hey guys, where are you? Well, I'll tell you - they've all been pushed of the Bay because the cost of living is just too high (again, there's pockets that try resisting, but struggle). So in the end, only folks with Big Tech salaries can afford to live in the Bay, which in turns means that it's really a monoculture.

L.A is a totally different vibe, that's for sure, but I'll blame Shock #4 to the flipping Red Hot Chili Peppers, who somehow sold to me the idea that all of California rocks.

Nothing makes me feel less welcome and safe on the road than a Cybertruck. I despise them and everything they represent.

Shock #5: Lack of architectural beauty

This is just personal taste, but I found most architecture in California to be quite dull. No cute bricks, no quaint cobblestones. No nicely decorated signs or facades. Just low-rise buildings with a door and a lot of "shtuff" to buy inside. And "Open/Closed" neons everywhere, even on high end restaurants!

Peak Silicon Valley. No skyscrapers, etc. Just fast food chains and parking spots.

At "best", most days it just felt like I was on the set of The Truman Show. Things seemed just copy pasted across blocks for miles, with zero variation and character. Buildings were "clean" but in an unsettling way, almost as if nobody lived there.

I didn't mind this "simple but practical" style of architecture once we travelled a bit more south and we entered more desert-y areas. But for modern cities it felt like most streets had a weird "fake" patina on them, almost as if they were computer generated. No graffiti, no sign of any of kind of 'youth' marking the streets.

Well, except for this one. Props to whoever made it!

Does nobody have any opinion on anything in this town? Not even small peace signs sloppily painted, or a hastily sprayed tag? Only Oakland felt a bit different. But from SF to San Jose, most towns were truly unremarkable, except Palo Alto.

Turns out that GTA San Andreas looks like the way it looks.. because this is how California looks. It's not a 'videogame' aesthetic..

Shock #6: Having a Big Tech job

So, nature was okay, cycling and walking were meh, culture was meh, architecture was meh.. what about the #1 reason you got there? What about your job?

My job was.. okay.

With time I was able to carve a spot solving the kind of problems I like (package management, CLIs, backends, colour tools and lots of "big pipeline picture" stuff, et cetera). So that was all nice and dandy, mostly, except the usual (unavoidable) office politics here and there. Hybrid working was a pretty healthy arrangement, too.

But most of the folks around me were just absolutely uninspired. It's almost as if everybody is just there to get a lot of money and then patiently wait for when they can do something better with their life (you know, FIRE and all). Some do it for long enough that they just forget that when they started off they were different people, maybe with other interests outside just talking about "iPhones" or the "Vision Pro" and stocks going up and down. But it's definitely not a company of "pirates" anymore, if you wonder.

My perception of the composition of folks in there was the following:

  • 30%: Apple priests that will quickly outcast you as a witch if you don't pray to Lord Apple their same way do (aka: if you actually think different)
  • 55%: "Get shit done" folks that only care about getting AAPL high every quarter forever, no matter what
  • 10%: Inspired people that are still trapped there and think "maybe things will change for good one day"
  • 5%: Just passing through, I need some money now

Not a composition worth moving to the other side of the world for, that's for sure.

Let me just say one thing: I used to be a big Apple fan, before working at the company. I loved the UNIX roots and the fact that I can do both creative and programming tasks on the same OS. I loved the attention to details, and the stories on why typography is so nice on the Mac.

But after having worked there, I can only say that it feels like a miracle that we still get decent products out of Apple. My honeymoon with Apple products is definitely over, and I now seek shelter in Linux and a variety of other companies (like Framework), mostly as my last shield against enshittification. I know it might get there eventually, but it's nice to be surrounded by people that you know will at least fight at little bit before the "next big OS update that nobody asked for" drastically changes your interactions with a product you use 8 hours a day. Or until the next app becomes yet another service..

I wrote about these feelings in An ode to Open Systems, so I won't cover them here too in too much detail. But suffice to say, I wasn't as thrilling as I thought it would be.

Finally

So that's why I'm back in London.

Well, there's way more things that I didn't list, but it gets pretty boring to just keep on listing negatives forever, and I'm genuinely not that kind of person (usually!). I am sure you can live a happy life in the Bay, if you're a certain kind of person. And I am also sure that before Big Tech entered the picture, the Bay was a very different (and much more enjoyable) place. If I didn't have to transplant my whole life there I would also have very different feelings.

But as far as London (and for some parts, Europe too) goes, this is a recap for all of my American friends who never left the USA during their whole life:

  • We do get sun too (every couple of days, and even more during the summer!)
  • We have great cycling infrastructure
  • Public transport is still relatively cheap and quick! (and it doesn't take cash, unlike L.A!)
  • The food scene is fantastic (and a frozen pizza doesn't go for $12!)
  • London is filled with music gigs all year round (I booked more concerts in the 2 weeks I've been here than in 2 years in the Bay)
  • There's parks in most corner of the city
  • You can walk a lot, basically everywhere if you want (since I moved back I "closed my rings" almost every day)
  • Finding campsites doesn't feel like a part time job
  • And while real mountains and real sea are still far, I can at least plan my usual 2 weeks road trip across Europe without feeling suffocated. Visit Greece, Spain, Croatia and feel free!
  • Yes, rent in London is high as f* to the point of being ridiculous, but you don't want to know how much a 2 bedroom place goes for in the Bay, trust me :D

If there's one thing I learned while being on a higher salary, is that golden handcuffs are very real.
It's good to be back in Europe (culturally), even if that means being a bit poorer, but happier. :)

PS: I didn't even mention politics, look at me! Well, unless you lived under a rock, you might agree that the current situation in the USA is a bit.. unprecedented to say the least.