Sooner or later the global hub of the computer industry has to shift away from San Francisco to somewhere there's actually some goddamn space. That time is now, as evidenced by the ridiculous prices, which are pushing people out. This is a good and natural stage of the process.
The only question is whether we destroy one of the few genuinely pleasant cities in North America trying to hold on for another decade.
Sigh. It seems that every time I say something counter-circlejerklical, I take a karma hit which prevents me from posting for hours. "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down."
So a bit like Hong Kong, Singapore, or Manhattan?
[0] http://7-themes.com/data_images/out/69/7008405-hong-kong-sky...
They've tried. Several times. It never works. As soon as the economy donwnturns, all the non-SV sites get shuttered. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And now, people have been through enough iterations to know that non-SV satellite sites are full of crap.
The consolidation in the semiconductor industry isn't helping, either.
However, the solution is rather simple: sustained Series A investment in an area. This is the key point that drives Silicon Valley--as bad as the Series A situation is in the Valley, it's orders of magnitude better than anywhere else. So, if you funded 50 Series A's each year at about $5 million each, you wind up with about 5,000 employees and 500 companies for about $2.5 billion invested over 10 years.
Given the lack of Series A in the valley right now, THAT would create a new Silicon Valley.
Of course, at that point, the VC's in Silicon Valley would finally get off their asses and start funding Series A's, so now you are competing with them as they attempt to short circuit your ability to get another Silicon Valley off the ground.
So, is someone going to cough up a check for $2.5 billion to be contrary and make the next Silicon Valley? Or, instead, are they just going to go join the rest in the valley?
I know what I would do if I had that kind of money.
The concentration is not irrational. That's the problem.
The concentration is driven by the fact that you will, not might, get laid off at some point if your job is in the tech sector. So, what happens is that everybody thinks about where their next job is going to be while getting hired for their current job.
If I somehow manage to land, say, a VLSI layout job in Pittsburgh, PA, there is no point in going there as when I get laid off, there is no other VLSI layout job. So, I'll have to go back to Silicon Valley. So, why should I leave Silicon Valley in the first place?
You might think that, okay, Pittsburgh is a problem, but what about Austin? Oddly, same issue. A hardware company wiped out most of its Austin site, set off a big scramble and those people couldn't land jobs because there are no other ones there (people think of Austin as tech--but it's not really hardware tech). I know lots of people who got hired in the "Big Data Analytics" startup fad who are now figuring out that they basically signed onto "Actuarial Science"--but, if they have a family, they really have nowhere else to go. The single ones are either changing fields (becoming a chef seems to be popular--go figure) or going to Silicon Valley.
Whereas, in Silicon Valley, you turn right at the last light instead of left, and you're at your new job.