I'd love to see NYC co-opt SV as the world capital of the tech industry, and I think it could totally happen. The only thing SV has going is historical inertia, and it's eroding. This housing problem in SV is going to make it erode faster.
Honestly I don't understand SV at all. They say NYC has a housing cost problem, and it sure does, but it's nothing compared to SV -- in SV you have people paying Manhattan prices so they can live in SF... yet somehow still commuting an hour to the suburbs where the offices are! At least here you can either pay Manhattan prices and get a 10 minute commute for it -- or take an hour-long commute and at least get a much cheaper and/or larger place in exchange. And your commute won't require you to drive, unless you want that.
NB: I've never lived in the SV area so maybe I have some misconceptions that need correcting? :-)
The size of the campuses in Silicon Valley literally cannot fit in NYC. No comparison.
Its fantastic that Google bought a block of Manhattan for 1 billion dollars, but Google's Mountain View campus is ALL of Mountain View. These are sprawling districts that cannot fit inside of a skyscraper.
The next fundamental difference is the variety of VCs. NYC cannot replicate this, and there is nothing eroding about it. NYC has one or two VCs looking at the same industry trends. Silicon Valley has many VCs interested in completely different things, different portfolio niches.
NYC has variety of industries and conveniences.
Silicon Valley doesn't even know how backwards its infrastructure is, while trying to change a world that functions better than it does already.
San Francisco masquerades as Silicon Valley and an international city but it is neither. New York, London and Hong Kong are international cities, SF struggles to keep up with the tech bubbles that it remains on the periphery of and only recently gained relevance for.
There is more tech focused stuff in SF and Silicon Valley, but New York has enough satellite offices to keep you occupied.
Is that a definite? I mean, most of Mountain View and its tech campuses are sprawling suburbia (e.g. vast fields of asphalt and grass with a building sprinkled here and there). It's amazing what can fit in a well-designed commercial district.
Google employs 19,000 people in Mountain View currently
The Twin Towers in NYC each held 25,000 people on a daily basis.
Two buildings in NYC could accommodate the populations of two tech giants that sprawl across entire south bay towns. So several of NYC's average sized and planned skyscrapers could do a fine job. And there is room every direction away from Midtown Manhattan to replicate new robust building clusters.
> The combined value of just Google, Apple, and Facebook is $1.3 trillion dollars.
Well, to the extent that those three companies have employees in other cities, I'd count their market caps proportionally towards those cities. I'm not sure offhand about Apple or FB but Google has a huge office in NYC. But that still leaves the vast majority in SV.
> Also, most successful hubs are often one industry towns. Think Detroit and Houston.
Ominous and timely comparisons. One-industry towns are also way more vulnerable in the long run. NYC is actually a counterexample -- it is the industry hub for at least three industries (finance, fashion, advertising) and leads or has a strong presence in many others, and it's been that way for a long time.
> But it is also a mistake to think SV is just a "tech" hub.
If being close to other members of the industry you are "disrupting" with tech is useful, then that is a huge advantage for a city like NYC with a wide variety of industry. But maybe that's not that necessary -- maybe Tesla would not get much advantage out of being in Detroit near other automakers. If that's the case then a city like NYC does not have any special advantage there.
Then you'd have to count Wall Street, which for a great part are big software companies as well.
I think the benefits of more people meeting, networking, and starting new things in the area vastly outweighs their interest in their homes. It's not like this really affects the pricing of mansions much anyway, and if they aren't living in a mansion, it's probably such a small amount of their overall wealth that it's inconsequential.
The key will be those other cities/hubs having their own successes, bringing in the capital and expertise to nurture new talent. It's likely that the number of successful hubs that can be supported is pretty low. I happen to believe that the amount of (awful word) synergy needed to flip a few percent of startups from fail/borderline to success is pretty high. In other words, all those know-a-guy-who-can-help connections have to have a high concentration before it starts to pay off.
But then mine is just a theory as well and has a high chance of being wrong.
We've always made up crazy lies just to keep the Californians away, but ultimately it isn't working. Seattle is a nice place to live/work, and has plenty of jobs for techies.
I split the difference and ended up in Portland.
I was born in Portland when it was bigger than Seattle (after the early 70s Boeing bust, and when Intel/Tektronix was picking up). How times have changed...
I pay $1850 a month for a 496 sq ft "Open" one bedroom. It's basically a studio with a wall that segments off my bedroom.
Which is more than fine for me :D Get to live downtown, get to walk to work, walk to bars, etc. But if you wanted an average 3br/2ba apartment, you're probably looking in the $3500+/mo. And buying is so competitive right now it's insane.
I just hope housing there is affordable without a roommate by the time I can graduate.
Basically, if you move to Seattle, you are pretty much restricted to working for Microsoft or Amazon and that's it. Period. Nothing else.
It's a huge career limiting move, make sure you're okay with it.
Google has a big campus here in Fremont and Kirkland, and they're building a huge new complex in South Lake Union (Amazon's stomping grounds).
Facebook just opened their brand new office in SLU.
Samsung is here. Adobe is here. Atlassian is here. Uber is here. DocuSign is here.
Expand the metro area to Bellevue (since we included Microsoft above) add companies like Redfin, Zillow, Expedia, FICO, Disney.
Edit: Oh yeah, forgot Intel and EMC as well.
I'm sure there's many I missed but there's WAY more than just Microsoft and Amazon.
... Just don't tell anyone. Go to Portland instead. I hear they want you ;)
There ARE other cities with a lot of quality, diverse tech jobs outside of the Bay Area. I live in one of them and I don't consider it a 'career limiting move'.
They can make billions from funding startups.
It still surprises me that an industry that's all about connecting the world through the internet and allowing anyone to work with anyone else on anything says "yeah but you need to work in this small area of the country to do it."
The armchair economist in me says that high housing prices in the Bay Area will cause a market "correction" of sorts with other cities exploding as tech sectors -- see NY, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Las Vegas -- as those cities can get away with much better housing for cheap, even if the opportunities aren't as plentiful (yet.)
<conspiracy theory> The cynic in me likes to think that VC's and other wealthy tech execs are trying to keep housing prices high by artificially creating this in-elasticity ("you can have my funding if you live in SF" or "we don't allow remote workers"), as they all probably own houses in the area; the incentives for them would be to have housing prices keep rising, NOT fall, as they would lose significant real-estate equity. </conspiracy theory>