I’m 27, at least for one more day and I will be graduating with my PhD in exactly one month from UCSD. I moved here from Washington because of the biotech possibilities here, as well as the lifestyle. Five years later I can say other things are more important now. I am leaving CA, as most of my friends have already done for the last 6 months. My wife has family here, but I don’t. We decided that our lives will be much better moving to a place that is colder but cheaper. Considering the stress of trying to earn that extra 20% to live in a decent sized house, it really is not that attractive of a lifestyle to live in CA for someone in my situation, in my opinion. I have found that looking for a job in biotech is not easy, even with an MBA, and being flexible about moving is the only way of getting a job paying what you are worth with a PhD. To poorgradstudent, good luck getting that biotech position, it won’t be easy here unless you think post-doc salaries (40k).
I think young adults (20s) with graduate degrees here are struggling a lot more than most people think, and would probably be happier somewhere else. San Diego’s loss is other cities gain, I guess.