Regional Profiles - The West Coast - Is it the Best Coast?
What You Need to Know About the Other Side of the Map
Issue date: 2/9/09 Section: Features
The combined port of Los Angeles and Long Beach is the fifth largest port in the world and the most significant in the Western hemisphere. And while longshoremen at the port probably make more money than many Harvard MBAs, breaking into this union is no easy task. If your uncle wasn't a longshoreman, my understanding is that you don't have much of a chance. You think there's value in the HBS network? It's nothing compared to what these guys have got.
Homebuilding was once a huge industry in Southern California, with Fortune 500 companies such as KB Homes and Countrywide Financial both headquartered in the area. But if you haven't heard by now, let me be the first to tell you: that whole thing didn't really work out.
The San Francisco Bay Area is known for high-tech innovation, left-leaning politics and a pleasant but expensive quality of life. With San Francisco at its center, the Bay Area includes Marin County to the north across the Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland and Berkeley to the east and San Jose south down the San Francisco Peninsula. With plenty of open space among the urban and suburban centers of the Bay Area, locals make time for mountain biking, wine tasting, hiking, surfing, fishing and many other activities. And within about a three-hour drive, you can find your way to the gorgeous year-round playground that is Lake Tahoe. On the border between California and Nevada, the Jewel of the Sierra Nevada offers skiing, watersports, nightlife and gambling.
The Bay Area also seems to have a large number of garages, because many of the technological advances of the last few decades were invented in someone's garage there. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Google (a Bay Area native) is going around buying garages these days, hoping that someone is just sitting inside inventing something.
Since the Gold Rush, San Francisco has been known as the financial capital of the West Coast, but in case you haven't heard, finance isn't really working out right now either.
Homebuilding was once a huge industry in Southern California, with Fortune 500 companies such as KB Homes and Countrywide Financial both headquartered in the area. But if you haven't heard by now, let me be the first to tell you: that whole thing didn't really work out.
The San Francisco Bay Area is known for high-tech innovation, left-leaning politics and a pleasant but expensive quality of life. With San Francisco at its center, the Bay Area includes Marin County to the north across the Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland and Berkeley to the east and San Jose south down the San Francisco Peninsula. With plenty of open space among the urban and suburban centers of the Bay Area, locals make time for mountain biking, wine tasting, hiking, surfing, fishing and many other activities. And within about a three-hour drive, you can find your way to the gorgeous year-round playground that is Lake Tahoe. On the border between California and Nevada, the Jewel of the Sierra Nevada offers skiing, watersports, nightlife and gambling.
The Bay Area also seems to have a large number of garages, because many of the technological advances of the last few decades were invented in someone's garage there. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Google (a Bay Area native) is going around buying garages these days, hoping that someone is just sitting inside inventing something.
Since the Gold Rush, San Francisco has been known as the financial capital of the West Coast, but in case you haven't heard, finance isn't really working out right now either.
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