{"id":49378,"date":"2026-04-21T09:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T09:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-to-san-francisco-to-work-in-ai-living-here-requires-sacrifices-i-gave-up-normalcy-to-gain-access\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T09:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T09:31:08","slug":"i-moved-to-san-francisco-to-work-in-ai-living-here-requires-sacrifices-i-gave-up-normalcy-to-gain-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-to-san-francisco-to-work-in-ai-living-here-requires-sacrifices-i-gave-up-normalcy-to-gain-access\/","title":{"rendered":"I moved to San Francisco to work in AI. Living here requires sacrifices \u2014 I gave up normalcy to gain access."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69de9136d06bf1b90127397a?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Ahmed Ahres presenting on a stage\"\/><figcaption>Ahmed Ahres says living in San Francisco makes him feel like anything is possible.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed Ahres<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Ahmed Ahres moved from London to San Francisco on an O-1 Visa in 2025.<\/li>\n<li>Though living in San Francisco has boosted his ambition, he has felt pressure to always be thriving.<\/li>\n<li>Ahres says it&#039;s difficult to escape talks about tech, but relationships are his key to boundaries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ahmed Ahres, a 27-year-old Product &amp; GTM at a tech startup based in San Francisco. It&#039;s been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I hold the belief that if you want to become the best in the world at something, you&#039;ve got to surround yourself with the best in the world. For technology, the place to do that is San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>When I moved here from London a year ago, I came on an O-1 visa, a pathway for foreigners with exceptional abilities to live and work in the US. I came here willing to sacrifice things like closeness to my family in Tunisia because my priority is my tech career.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;What are you building?&quot; is the first question someone might ask me if I stumble into a conversation at a bar or coffee shop here in San Francisco; not my name, or my job. Your career seems to matter more than who you are here.<\/p>\n<p>The sheer amount of ambition and innovation in San Francisco is motivating, but this isn&#039;t an easy place to live in when your career is not thriving. Still, I wouldn&#039;t want to be anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n<h2>I&#039;m so much more ambitious in San Francisco<\/h2>\n<p>I was granted an O-1 visa last year after raising funding from a US investor for my AI startup. My visa lasts three years, and I can work in any job related to AI. Since moving, my cofounder has taken over the majority of the company, and I now work in product for a company building the future of video AI.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;ve always been an ambitious person, but my level of ambition has increased massively since being surrounded by people who are basically telling me, whatever you&#039;re dreaming, you can dream of a vision that&#039;s one thousand times bigger.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like I can do things here. I had an idea to start a podcast in January, and a week later, I recorded my first episode. Our environment defines us, and seeing everyone here put things into action has inspired me to embody that same level of ambition.<\/p>\n<h2>San Francisco feels like a place where anything is possible<\/h2>\n<p>I see San Francisco as an environment that not only defines who I am today, but who I want to become: this ambitious person who can do anything he sets his mind to.<\/p>\n<p>Since being here, people have told me, &quot;Ahmed, you&#039;ve become a bit crazy.&quot; And I&#039;m like, &quot;Yeah, I love it.&quot; Being here makes me believe everything is possible.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#039;t want to be in a job where I&#039;m thinking about how to increase revenue little by little. No, I want to do something that completely changes the world. <\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s just the nature of being surrounded by people who think like that.<\/p>\n<h2>There&#039;s pressure to act like everything is OK all the time<\/h2>\n<p>I had a transition period in late 2025 when I knew I wanted to step back a little from the company I had built; I felt completely lost. In that time, I stopped going to events or even meeting up with people because I knew I&#039;d get asked about what I was building.<\/p>\n<p>There&#039;s this expectation in San Francisco to be starting a company or doing something big at all times, so it was very hard to be open about my uncertainty. I think a lot of people are pretending to be doing well out here when they&#039;re not. I did too.<\/p>\n<p>At certain dinners and events, despite the fact that I was realizing I didn&#039;t want to continue down my path as a founder, I&#039;d often answer &quot;the company is doing super well,&quot; and &quot;I&#039;m excited about the future&quot; when I wasn&#039;t.<\/p>\n<p>It was hard being in a low place when it felt like I was the only one. Thankfully, I have a great support system around me. They were extremely supportive and encouraged me to pursue my passion and work on something that I absolutely love and believe in.<\/p>\n<h2>It&#039;s hard to escape conversations about technology<\/h2>\n<p>I&#039;m very passionate about technology, so I love talking about it, but there are times when I&#039;m out doing something for fun, and I have to plainly say I don&#039;t want to talk about work.Back in London, people work hard, protect their personal time, and rarely talk about work outside of office hours. At 5 p.m., pubs and bars are full. The mentality is more &quot;work to live&quot; than &quot;live to work.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s hard to escape talks about tech, but I&#039;m lucky to have friends I already knew before moving and my brother here. I can have deep conversations with them about anything.<\/p>\n<p>When I first moved, I struggled to meet people outside of those few, but I&#039;ve gotten into hobbies like tennis, where I&#039;ve met some good friends who have nothing to do with work, and that has helped me settle in.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Building genuine relationships is the key to boundaries<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In the San Francisco tech scene, your status isn&#039;t defined by what car or home you own; it&#039;s defined by who you know, what you&#039;re building, and how much money you&#039;ve raised. People really care about that, and it can be hard to make genuine relationships.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;ve realized that it&#039;s OK to go to events and try to get customers and grow your company. At the same time, it&#039;s very important that I create, build, and nurture relationships that are bigger than just work for my long-term happiness.<\/p>\n<p>Making sure I&#039;m having deep conversations with friends about things outside of our jobs is really important to me and helps me find balance in my life here.<\/p>\n<p><em>Do you have a story to share about what it&#039;s like living in San Francisco? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ahmed Ahres says living in San Francisco makes him feel like anything is possible. Ahmed Ahres Ahmed Ahres moved from London to San Francisco on an O-1 Visa in 2025. Though living in San Francisco has boosted his ambition, he has felt pressure to always be thriving. Ahres says it&#039;s difficult to escape talks about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}