San Francisco may have a reputation for being AI-obsessed and chock-full of antisocial tech nerds—but those are only stereotypes, right?
A viral post from a San Francisco tech worker brought all the city’s clichés into focus, after he visited New York City and was seemingly amazed by people interested in anything other than AI.
Parv Sondhi, a San Francisco-based project manager with experience at Apple, eBay, and UC Berkeley, took to social media to share his observations after spending a week in New York City. In his post, he remarked on seeing “very few AI ads or billboards around” and coming across “way more artists.”
Sondhi seemed especially wowed by how social New Yorkers are relative to San Franciscans. He noted that “people are actually outside touching grass (or cement 😅),” “everyone is willing to strike up a conversation (not about AI agents),” and he “found a way to talk to folks without mentioning AI.”
In one particularly head-scratching observation, Sondhi noted that “even cafés” had “very few screens with Claude Code or Cursor or some coding tool.”
“It’s genuinely refreshing to remember there’s a whole world outside the feed,” Sondhi wrote to conclude his post. “The SF tech bubble makes it easy to forget how alive real cities feel. Sorry SF, you’re still home . . . but perspective is healthy.”
In the replies to his post, Sondhi continued praising New York City’s energy, saying “no one cared how many agents I have running” and “I actually felt motivated to read and write more instead of just spending 20 hours on my laptop.”
