Comment by dheera

> Moving out to the Bay Area, people are refreshingly direct

Weird, I moved from Boston to the Bay Area and I have the opposite experience.

In Boston if someone asked me to have dinner with them it was always just dinner. If they had other intentions they would state them up front.

In the Bay Area a good fraction of the time the other person has an unstated intention (hiring, dating, asking for intros to dates, asking for intros to investors, asking for other help ...) that I usually need to dig up before I say yes or no. The thing is, sometimes it is a yes, I just wish people would be more upfront that there is an agenda around this "dinner".