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San Francisco may have a reputation for being AI-obsessed and chock-full of antisocial tech nerds\u2014but those are only stereotypes, right?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A viral post from a San Francisco tech worker brought all the city\u2019s clich\u00e9s into focus, after he visited New York City and was seemingly amazed by people interested in anything other than AI.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>, he remarked on seeing \u201cvery few AI ads or billboards around\u201d and coming across \u201cway more artists.\u201d<\/p>\n Sondhi seemed especially wowed by how social New Yorkers are relative to San Franciscans. He noted that \u201cpeople are actually outside touching grass (or cement \ud83d\ude05),\u201d \u201ceveryone is willing to strike up a conversation (not about AI agents),\u201d and he \u201cfound a way to talk to folks without mentioning AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In one particularly head-scratching observation, Sondhi noted that \u201ceven caf\u00e9s\u201d had \u201cvery few screens with Claude Code or Cursor or some coding tool.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s genuinely refreshing to remember there\u2019s a whole world outside the feed,\u201d Sondhi wrote to conclude his post. \u201cThe SF tech bubble makes it easy to forget how alive real cities feel. Sorry SF, you\u2019re still home . . . but perspective is healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n In the replies to his post, Sondhi continued praising New York City\u2019s energy, saying \u201cno one cared how many agents I have running\u201d and \u201cI actually felt motivated to read and write more instead of just spending 20 hours on my laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n