New York is far and away the most diverse place in the country, and only a few places in the world can compare (e.g. London).
I am pretty sure a lot of Asian and Indian people will find that racist and offensive. I certainly do, and I'm neither.
As to New York, per my comment NY might be but Wall Street sucks the oxygen out of the talent room, similarly London where the City takes all the tech talent and starves startups of top-tier talent.
Most startups are boring ass websites with none viable business ideas. They do not need baller engineers. If they have a working business eventually, they're competing to hire the smart folks based upon the mix of compensation, work and colleagues. If you can't build a biz that can sustain a compelling mix of those three hiring ingredients, you aren't allowed to successfully hire good engineers.
People: you aren't allowed to blame your crap hiring strategy on NYC finance firms scooping up all the smart engineers that wanted to work in finance. There are so many smart engineers who do / want live in NYC and Not work in finance. If you're failing to hire people it's because you have at least one of the following: a work environment that isn't a sane/pleasant place to spend 40 hours a week, crap compensation, or your biz is a CRUD website with the personality of a heavily used smelly sponge.
No particular category of business "deserves" smart people, they work hard to get those folks. And frankly, most startups are just crud websites. Additionally, the vast majority of interesting engineering challenges only happen at larger organizations. (That said, there are many small tech businesses that have really cool tech challenges, but that's the exception rather than the rule).
Let me restate that: most startups have boring work, terrible hours and crap pay.
Tl;dr to quote a favorite phrase of an awesome friend / software engineer: "fuck you, pay me money [if you want me to work with you]"
New York is a lovely place to live, one of the most truely urban and actually diverse locales one the planet. Certainly the only city in the US with subways that work 24/7 and good food at all hours. Not having to drive is a beautiful healthy thing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2012/11/13/finding-divers...
"The Houston region is now the most racially and ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the United States, surpassing the New York metro area, acccording to a new analysis of Census data." [1]
(Granted, the study was done by folks at Rice University here in Houston ....)
[1] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...
I lived in Atlanta for a long time, which is very "diverse" in the sense that there are large numbers of each of whites, blacks, and hispanics. But it was nothing like New York where you had viable communities of say Trinidadians versus Jamaicans, etc.
The valley exists on the doorstep of stanford - an incredibly highly selected (this year the most highly selective) university. In addition to that a large portion of the people I've met here come from fabulously wealthy backgrounds (dynasty money) where failure is largely irrelevant because there is always a near infinite supply of backup money.
I think part of the reason the valley does well is because the population is some of the most homogenous and highly selected in the world all living in the same place and there is enough wealth to try things.
EDIT: To clarify not just ethnic diversity, but diversity of opinion and openness to all kinds of cultural diversity. For example I see a non-trivial number of non-straight people in startups, and it's pretty easy to argue many parts of the world claiming they want to create a new Silicon Valley are not as embracing as the Bay Area when it comes to sexual identity.
However, I share your hope that the increased ethnic diversity, and the general nationwide cultural trends of young people being more open to new things and will become thought leaders. Of course my reluctant skepticism comes from what I experienced (great anecdote for another venue) of the control of thought leadership by a very narrow good-ole-boy network which appears pretty well entrenched and able to ride out the best intentions of upcoming potential leaders. I was shocked by the examples of outright corruption while living there.
Not to dampen your optimism - I am absolutely cheering you on to be right, as I'd love to see it, but I'm sadly pessimistic.
Still. Not quite sure why my original point that started this thread keeps getting downvoted though - that's several so far, as far as I can tell.
I'm not saying this is bad, but that diversity may not be that important for a silicon valley like atmosphere and that the people who work in tech aren't very diverse. Palo Alto also isn't a very varied place and is the center of the current silicon valley.
I think a meritocracy and a willingness to try/accept new ideas rather than hold on to tradition is the important thing. I think that tends to go along with education, the more highly selected the better.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Fort...
But I've no doubt Silicon Valley is fairly diverse, although there were a bunch of articles in the last couple of years pointing out how little diversity there is in the management layers of Silicon Valley companies.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2012/11/13/finding-divers...
because having lived in New York, and currently between DC and Houston, whenever I'm in Silicon Valley I'm always sort of, taken aback, by the paucity of blacks there. Reading through that article, I see now that it wasn't just my imagination.
Statistically...
it's Houston.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/09/07/which-u-s-cities-a...
(I don't really care what city wins, but it was absurd to read that the Silicon Valley area was not diverse...)
Yet that cultural tolerance has been shown time and again to be critical in attracting the creative class professionals which make Silicon Valley tick.
Houston is more diverse than New York.
It's not a coincidence that Silicon Valley exists on the doorstep of the most diverse community in the US - not just ethnically but in all areas of lifestyle diversity. Many places are not prepared to embrace that.
Embrace of failure is incompatible with deep seted cultural values in many parts of the world.
Tax regimes... Legal structures favoring equity sharing... At will employment...
Most of the places that want to recreate Silicon Valley always seen to add a "But Our Way". Problem is "our way" means keeping in place many of the sources of the failure which those places have had to date in having already created their own Silicon Valley. (Typo apologies via iPhone)