"San Francisco and Silicon Valley are more of a meritocracy than any place I have ever been. Discrimination in SF is based more on one's brain than on one's background. In all my dealings in the Bay Area, I have never been asked, in a business setting, what my father does for a living or what high school I went to. Those are very East coast questions.

In New York, people are always trying to put a box around you. Where did you grow up? What church do you go to? what is your ethnicity? What club did you join? How many middle names do you have? Not necessarily to discriminate (as I find New Yorkers extraordinarily friendly and inviting), but more to try to better categorize someone. In New York, it is far more important that one is Jewish and went to Exeter Academy then that information would be in San Francisco. "